How to Build an Airplane with Morphing Skin? Ask the Pentagon

Stealth aircraft are designed to absorb and deflect radar, thus becoming harder to detect than conventional aircraft. This technology may take an unusual evolutionary path with the Pentagon's newest project that should do more than block radar waves, as it will be able to change shape using a chain-mail-like morphing skin.

The wise guys in the US Department of Defense, meaning the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), would like to build a new type of airplane, that will be covered in this morphing skin, which should be flexible yet having sufficient stiffness to withstand large aerodynamic forces.

This transformable skin will incorporate two mechanisms for an efficient shape-shifting ability, one for enabling a first type of deformation of the skin and a second one for resisting "a second type of deformation that is different than the first type of deformation in direction or form."

A transcript of the patent presents the requirements of the new project: "The first mechanism includes a plural partially planar spring structures arranged parallel to each other. The plural partially planar spring structures are resistant to bending and are interconnected via rigid connecting structures. The spring structures are partially planar, and the connecting structures are covered with an elastomeric material."

In other words, the outer surface of the aircraft will be elastic and able to adopt multiple forms, independent of the solid frame. It will look like a chain-mail armor where each piece will move into a specific position in order to generate a complex pattern in mid-flight, thus altering the apparent configuration and exterior aspect of the airplane.

As with every military project, details are scarce, and the patent doesn't say anything about weight, crucial to the aviation industry, or price, which is not only theoretically important.

After all, if the project is successful, no one in the world will notice how much it cost, when it will go unnoticed in battle and disguise itself as anything but a military plane.