weapons or other vehicles. Reduced signature design also improves platforms' overall survivability through the improved effectiveness of its radar counter-measures. Several methods exist. The distance at which a target can be detected for a given radar configuration varies with the fourth root of its RCS. Therefore, in order to cut the detection distance to one tenth, the RCS should be reduced by a factor of 10,000. While this degree of improvement is challenging, it is often possible when influencing platforms during the concept/design stage and using experts and advanced computer code simulations to implement the control options described below. Purpose shaping With purpose shaping, the shape of the target's reflecting surfaces is designed such that they reflect energy away from the source. The aim is usually to create a “cone-of-silence” about the target's direction of motion. Due to the energy reflection, this method is defeated by using passive (multistatic) radars. Purpose-shaping can be seen in the design of surface faceting on the F-117A Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft. This aircraft, designed in the late 1970s though only revealed to the public in 1988, uses a multitude of flat surfaces to reflect incident radar energy away from the source. Yue suggests that limited available computing power for the design phase kept the number of surfaces to a minimum. The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber benefited from increased computing power, enabling its contoured shapes and further reduction in RCS. The F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II continue the trend in purpose shaping and promise to have even smaller monostatic RCS. Redirecting scattered energy without shaping This technique is relatively new compared to other techniques chiefly after the invention of metasurfaces. As mentioned earlier, the primary objective in geometry alteration is to redirect scattered waves away from the backscattered direction (or the source). However, it may compromise performance in terms of aerodynamics. One feasible solution, which has extensively been explored in recent time, is to utilize metasurfaces which can redirect scattered waves without altering the geometry of the target. Such metasurfaces can primarily be classified in two categories: (i) Checkerboard metasurfaces, (ii) Gradient index metasurfaces. Active cancellation With active cancellation, the target generates a radar signal equal in intensity but opposite in phase to the predicted reflection of an incident radar signal (similarly to noise canceling ear phones). This creates destructive interference between the reflected and generated signals, resulting in reduced RCS. To incorporate active