Why The F-117 Nighthawk’s Faceted Design Made It Nearly Invisible To 1980s Radar

The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk looks like a paper airplane folded by someone who had never seen a wing. Yet this bizarre-looking 65-foot-11-inch (20.1-meter) attack jet could return a radar echo of just 0.011 to 0.032 square feet (0.001 to 0.003 square meters), small enough to transform how far away a fire-control radar could detect it. The strange part is that the shape behind that result wasn’t the product of a futuristic computer designing the perfect stealth aircraft. It came from a much more restrictive set of calculations.