In our October 19, 2021 story about Russia's Zircon hypersonic missile, we quoted Kremlin deputy premier Yury Borisov, who said, "We have broken forward, specifically, in the sphere of hypersonic weapons and (those) based on new physical principles."
Now, it turns out that those "new physical principles" might not be so new after all, but rather date back to 1999 and have to do with plasma stealth. Plasma stealth is the use of an ionized gas, or plasma, to reduce the radar cross-section (RCS) of an object, such as an aircraft.
As we described, hypersonic vehicles or weapons fly so quickly that the air in front of them forms a plasma cloud that absorbs or interferes with radar waves, making the object practically invisible to radar systems.
To read more, click here.