Modern warfare requires being able to adjust in real-time to multiple evolving threats and be resilient in the face of networked defence systems. Today’s stealth solutions remain mostly passive and, thus, cannot provide adaptability, nor multifunctionality.
METASTEALTH envisions to tackle this challenge by applying the recent concept of digital metasurfaces to stealth applications. Those active solutions are very promising as they can shape the scattered electromagnetic field at will in real-time, switching functionality on the fly, and adapting it to operational needs.
METASTEALTH aims to achieve disruptive performance with 2 ground-breaking technologies:
Self-Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces – SRIS (radar absorbers)
Time-Modulated Intelligent Surfaces – TMIS (radar deceptors), which provide multifunctionality as a key asset.
METASTEALTH will consider naval platforms to illustrate SRIS and TMIS paradigm-shifting potentialities.
The project aims to demonstrate the suitability of those two concepts by designing, fabricating, and characterizing demonstrators to bring these technologies to TRL4. A flexible project methodology, meant to mitigate uncertainties due to the development of such cutting-edge solutions, will be used. METASTEALTH, by bringing together 7 partners from 6 countries (France, Germany, Cyprus, Lithuania, Greece, and Spain), ambitions to take a leap forward to challenge the current stealth paradigm and deliver an unparalleled advantage to European naval, aerial, and terrestrial platforms.
A technology roadmap for follow-up developments, with associated probabilities of success, will ensure the continuity of the vision towards higher TRLs and industrial scale-up.
METASTEALTH will provide scientific leadership to Europe in this new field, pave the way for the foundation of a European network to structure R&D efforts, and provide the European defence industry with a key technological advance.