A Turkish researcher just shared details of a sprayable radar absorbent material (RAM) designed to be applied to drones and other small uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to the Defense Blog, Yunus İnce and their small defense research firm have been working on the material, called Kürşat 3.0, for more than seven years. İnce shared test footage of the product with the publication, showing the claimed 43dB signal attenuation. This is a greater reduction compared to broadband coatings tested by academic researchers in standardized test conditions. However, the company's claims must still be validated by a third-party expert to prove that it actually works and makes it harder to detect UAVs.
Drone warfare has exploded in recent years, with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started in 2022, showing how these cheap and tiny gadgets could effectively stop the advance of a multi-million-dollar tank column. Both sides of the conflict have wholeheartedly adopted UAVs as part of their military tactics, and militaries around the globe are devising cost-effective ways of taking down this new threat, like using lasers, microwaves, or good ol’ kinetic energy. Drone operators and manufacturers are not taking these threats lightly, with companies working to make them harder to detect via radar.
[...] A UAV’s advantage is its small size and low cost, making it cost-inefficient to produce specialized radar-deflecting designs. However, the Kürşat 3.0 could be a game-changer if other scientists can confirm that it really works. Many UAVs are so small that it’s difficult to detect them at longer distances — covering them with this “spray-on” RAM would only make it harder for defenders to detect and lock on to them using traditional radar sets.
This coating is not the be-all and end-all of drone stealth, though. That’s because most drones are built for efficiency and speed, not stealth, so they lack the required geometry to deflect radar signals. This is especially true for quadcopters, where the four exposed blades would easily reflect signals back to the radar transceiver. But because they’re often already tiny, covering them in Kürşat 3.0 spray would increase their survivability and make it harder for defenders to target them on their radar scopes.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02, @10:56AM (2 children)
> ... if other scientists can confirm that it really works.
There are many drones in use daily, on multiple battlefields. My guess is this new paint (and possibly some variations of it) is either being currently tested, or will be within days of the press release.
This isn't like testing new drugs where safety is primary. There's no reason to wait on lab tests for fine details, just paint some of your drones and see if more of them get through.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 02, @05:11PM
These are for the expensive high altitude surveillance drones not the low altitude zero radar threat "one way weapon" drones.
I am curious how they'll do surveillance footage and remote control without coating the antenna and ruining range.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 02, @08:18PM
Now all we need is a spray-on coating to conceal the GIGANTIC AUDIO SIGNATURE and we're all done.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02, @12:18PM
Back in the 1990s we switched our housings from aluminum boxes to plastic, but had challenges with the EMC issues - so we sprayed the insides with partially conductive paint - not just conductive but energy dissipating as well, as I recall it had a lot of nickel in it, and it was brown. And it was a pain in the ass to get a UL certified spraying company to put it on, ended up costing as much as the aluminum cases in the end.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Tuesday June 02, @12:59PM (4 children)
... Aluminium spray paint does the job quite well if you don't spread it too thick
Lab test ...
Spray a cardboard box with a very thin layer and put your phone in it, then try to call it with another phone.
If it rings, give it another thin coat and try it again til it doesn't.
If you are electrically minded, I believe the trick is to use an ohm meter and measure the resistance between a pair of points a couple of inches apart. The value you are looking for is about 7 ohms
You might want to check with a ham radio guy because it is about 50 years since I last did this.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02, @04:33PM (1 child)
Another choice is electroless nickel plating. Very thin uniform coating with a simple dip process, adheres well enough to many plastics.
https://electroless.co.nz/properties-of-electroless-nickel/ [electroless.co.nz]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 02, @08:20PM
Will ENIG do it? That stuff is relatively easy to get manufactured.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 02, @04:46PM
"back in the day" you mark where you're clamping the device (perhaps a device that causes interference, perhaps an antenna) on the bench, then clamp an antenna (any old thing) and your usual attenuator stack and feed it into the spectrum analyzer and see what happens before and after spraying the device or the container or whatever. You can read before and after signal levels in dB at various frequencies of interest off the spectrum analyzer, its pretty nice.
If you have a tracking generator you can test containers without a device, same you'd sweep a cable except there's no cable LOL.
Sometimes you want LOW RF attenuation if you're trying to put an antenna in a waterproof fiberglass tube, for example so sometimes you want minimal shielding sometimes you want maximal shielding.
Everything in RF is linked so you move your lab chair the measurement changes by a dB from echos and reflections HOWEVER if you can keep conditions constant enough this will give a decent idea how thick the paint has to be or doing comparison tests. Like swap a piece of semi-conductive black PVC pipe for insulative white PVC (or maybe it was some other plastic type) This is why it saves labor money to buy a $5K anechoic chamber for RF work. You can close the door and its constant and repeatable so you can compare results from last month with today as opposed to only really being able to compare results from 30 seconds ago.
Its a classic ham radio amateur radio thing where if labor is free you can accomplish crazy "impossible" things, but a business would never do it that way they've buy the test chamber or rent time on someone elses chamber at a compliance lab (which is indeed a thing)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02, @08:10PM
Purely conductive coating isn't as good as partially resistive conductive coatings (which may be your 'not too thick' modifier...)
They make spray paints that go on thick and resistive for various types of RF absorption / non-reflection, like TFA - but we were using one 25+ years ago and it wasn't new stuff then.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02, @04:30PM (2 children)
Looking at the image of their test UAV in the linked article, apparently it helps somewhat if the bloody things are small and already made out of mostly radar 'transparent' materials.
Paint something like a Cessna 172 with the stuff, do the tests, then get back to us.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 02, @07:25PM (1 child)
They are big enough to be shot down by some missiles. So I guess that some stealth coating wouldn't go amiss.
Why would anyone want to test a coating which is specifically designed for drones on a Cessna 172? Why not a 777? I suppose the ideal subject would be a drone, oh , wait ....
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02, @08:51PM
The point is, if we're talking about a test target which already has a small radar signature, testing the efficacy of a radar absorbent paint on it is a bit 'odd'.
A Cessna 172 has a 'known' and, in relation to most UAVs, a larger radar profile/signature, I'd regard it a better metric of the coating's effectiveness if slapping this stuff on a Cessna significantly alters/reduces it's radar profile rather that its effect on a UAV's smaller one.
Besides, there are already a number of UAVs out there which are larger than a Cessna which might benefit from this coating, and far be it for me to suggest that as end-of-airframe life Cessnas are available, it would not surprise me in the least that someone out there has already converted some of the buggers into UAVs.
As for 'why not a 777?', why not indeed?, look up N833NA.
UAVs/drones don't necessarily have to be physically small, and speculating here, it would be advantageous, shall we say, in certain circumstances to have an expedient capability available to reduce the radar signature of such a large beastie without altering its 'civilian' visual profile.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 02, @05:08PM (5 children)
Context? Compared to what? Who knows.
I have a can of MG 838AR in my lab/workroom/pile you can buy it from digikey. Its affordable but not cheap. Figure around 4x what you'd pay for paint at home depot, but cheaper than acrylic paint for minis at a hobby store at least per liter/gram. The data sheet is about 3 extremely detailed pages of assembly line sprayer setting nonsense required to meet the supposed marketing spec. They sell four viscosities of paint and this one is about in the middle. If you apply it properly you'll get the expected thickness because of the viscosity if you follow the rules after it dries.
(Note: don't buy the sprayer unless you're an assembly line the can will clog before you use most of it, get a bottle)
Measurement by a ham radio guy using home gear is difficult but it does plausibly seem to meet its goal of blocking 50 dB or so of noise below 1 MHz. I have put switching power supplies with extensive lead decoupling caps and inductors into boxes that don't wipe out HF/AM radio when painted but do when unpainted. Note that taking a shitty cut-every-corner chinese power supply with no RFI suppression from s9+50dB then removing 50dB of noise is still S9 noise across the band, it is no miracle cure but it does help.
In context the article tosses out a random number that means nothing to most people, like saying my house is 2 from the nearest EV charger. 2 what? meters, miles, furlongs, marathons? So "43 db" means F all without pages of specs like the paint on the shelf in my workbench provides.
My guess is the difference between a liter of COTS stuff that I own and this fancy pants space age stuff is my paint is indoor use otherwise plain old acrylic, I doubt it would last more than one flight, engine fuel may dissolve it, etc, my guess is the "real story" is this is legit aircraft paint quality stuff.
Digikey sells a pen applicator of this gloop for $20 for tiny circuit board level work (maybe touchups) whereas autozone/amazon sells a permatex gloop product for windshield defroster repair which looks quite a bit different and is not spec'd for RF attenuation for $15 so choose your poison.
These paints are semi-conductive. A perfect conductor would reflect and make a similar problem somewhere else. An awful conductor would be pretty much RF transparent and have little effect. Something that acts like a matched 50 ohm attenuator with 40-50 dB of attenuation is really quite useful.
Something to think about, the paint on my shelf eats 50 dB of noise... one way. Painted on an aircraft, it would eat 50dB before the radar pulse hits the aircraft aluminum, then eat 50 dB of the reflection for a total path loss of 100 dB. But this stuff is not durable enough to cover an airplane (.... or thought experiment ... a radar trap avoiding car)
In summary, I'm not impressed by the spec, I can buy "cheap" COTS stuff that performs about as well on my workbench, but I'm mildly impressed they can make it aircraft grade durable. That durability is the "real" story, not that it works at all or attenuates about as well as cheap competitors.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02, @08:14PM
If they're "in the field" with their own radars tracking incoming enemy drones, they can easily test this one to get a swag number like that.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02, @08:20PM (2 children)
> "43 db" means F all
Yea, and no. It beats the shit out of saying "it's 2 better" - assuming there's a detection threshold that these things fly outside/under while on approach, 43dB gives some sense of how much closer they can get before detection - and it implies: quite a bit closer.
So, that's pretty much out there in too good to be true territory, other effects are likely to come into play first, if the previous detection range was 10km it seems unlikely this thing's getting within 100m before detection.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 03, @02:11PM (1 child)
True true. But thats for skin painting pulse radar, like if it was glider. I imagine the doppler radar return of drone propellers must be amazing, the radar equivalent of a searchlight.
Maybe... that's the point of this secret military paint. Maybe this paint is usable on a propeller. I bet that no matter how carefully you spray it, you'll have to hand balance the prop afterward. I guess you could just spray a little more on the light side...
Apparently, stealth helicopters are a fairly hopeless concept according to these guys. But who knows, maybe this magic paint is for props, not fuselages, maybe it'll work for that.
https://www.dst.defence.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/documents/DST-Group-TR-3481.pd [defence.gov.au]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 03, @02:26PM
Yeah, after I posted I had that "what about the props?" thought, and they have to be rather outstanding in the doppler signature as compared to the rest of the craft, but... if they are made of a radio-transparent composite? (Not carbon fiber, but glass fiber...)
I went through a similar exercise for laser/radar reflection from the front of my 1991 MX-5. It has the pop-up headlights, so putting them down is a big reduction, but then there's the turn signal indicator reflectors - smaller, but still significant, those can be replaced with much less reflective units, then you've got the intercooler/AC condenser/radiator stack and the fans behind them, they don't reflect much laser but they do reflect a lot of radar... Luckily, in a field of pickup trucks and SUVs, the MX-5 is a much smaller return, however I believe the "audio doppler" of speed measuring radars will return loud low frequency signals for the big stuff, and a quieter but distinctive higher frequency signal for smaller faster moving targets. And, at the end of it all, an officer who wants to write a ticket will just write the ticket for whatever speed they want regardless of what the instruments tell them. Once I was cited for exactly 15mph over on the last day of the month (fines jump at that exact threshold), when I went to pay the ticket at the courthouse on the last day before penalties started accruing, there was a person in line ahead of me and another in line behind me paying the exact same fine for the exact same 15-over violation issued by the exact same officer on the exact same day... what are the odds?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02, @08:22PM
> make it aircraft grade durable
Suicide drones have a very different definition of "durable" than commercial passenger airplanes. It could wash off in a mild mist and still be useful on sunny days.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]