Stealth Warplanes; Osprey Combat Aircraft Series No. 13

London: Osprey Publishing, 1988. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Trade paperback. Very good. The format is approximately 7.25 inches by 9.75 inches. 48 pages, plus covers. Illustrations (come in full color artworks and illustrations). Minor cover wear and soiling. Bill Gunston OBE, FRAeS (1 March 1927 - 1 June 2013) was a British aviation and military author. He flew with Britain's Royal Air Force from 1945 to 1948, and after pilot training became a flying instructor. He spent most of his adult life doing research and writing on aircraft and aviation. He was the author of over 350 books and articles. Gunston was educated at Pinner County Grammar School. In his spare time, he was Flight Sergeant in the school Air Training Corps squadron. Gunston joined the Royal Air Force in 1945 and went to University College, Durham on an RAF cadetship. In 1946 he moved to No 4 Flying Training School in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia to train as a pilot. / He later moved to No 5 Flying Training School at Thornhill were he continued training and then became an instructor flying the North American Harvard. He later flew the de Havilland Vampire F3 a single-seat jet fighter before he left the RAF in 1948. Gunston attended the Northampton Engineering College until 1951 then he joined the staff of Flight International magazine, where, writing as "W.T.G.", he was appointed Technical Editor in April 1955. From 1969, he was part of the production team on the annual publication Jane's All the World's Aircraft, editing the 2015/16 edition. He was editor of Jane's Aero-Engines from 1995 to 2007. The Osprey Combat Aircraft series comprised a number of monographs on modern US and Soviet military aircraft and helicopters. The text presented a concise development and service history of the aircraft, but the main attraction of each title was the illustrations. Each title featured more than 30 b+w photos and 8 pages of color photographs and color artwork. Some line drawings and/or cutaway drawings were also featured in most titles. Stealth aircraft are designed to avoid detection using a variety of technologies that reduce reflection/emission of radar, infrared, visible light, radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and audio, all collectively known as stealth technology. The F-117 Nighthawk was the first operational aircraft explicitly designed around stealth technology. Other examples of stealth aircraft include the B-2 Spirit, the B-21 Raider, the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II, the Chengdu J-20, and the Sukhoi Su-57. While no aircraft is completely invisible to radar, stealth aircraft make it more difficult for conventional radar to detect or track the aircraft effectively, increasing the odds of an aircraft avoiding detection by enemy radar and/or avoiding being successfully targeted by radar guided weapons. Stealth is a combination of passive low observable (LO) features and active emitters such as low-probability-of-intercept radars, radios and laser designators. These are typically combined with operational measures such as carefully planning mission maneuvers to minimize the aircraft's radar cross-section, since common hard turns or opening bomb bay doors can more than double an otherwise stealthy aircraft's radar return. Stealth is accomplished by using a complex design philosophy to reduce the ability of an opponent's sensors to detect, track, or attack the stealth aircraft. This philosophy takes into account the heat, sound, and other emissions of the aircraft which can also be used to locate it. Sensors are made to reduce the impact of low observable technologies and others have been proposed such as IRST (infrared search and track) systems to detect even reduced heat emissions, long wavelength radars to counter stealth shaping and RAM focused on shorter wavelength radar, or radar setups with multiple emitters to counter stealth shaping. However these have disadvantages compared to traditional radar against non-stealthy aircraft. Full-size stealth combat aircraft demonstrators have been flown by the United States (in 1977), Russia (in 2000) and China (in 2011). As of December 2020, the only combat-ready stealth aircraft in service are the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (1997), the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor (2005), the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (2015), the Chengdu J-20 (2017), and the Sukhoi Su-57 (2020), with a number of other countries developing their own designs. There are also various aircraft with reduced detectability, either unintentionally or as a secondary feature. In the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia two stealth aircraft were used by the United States, the veteran F-117 Nighthawk, and the newly introduced B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber. The F-117 performed its usual role of striking precision high-value targets and performed well, although one F-117 was shot down by a Serbian Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' missile brigade commanded by Colonel Zoltán Dani.