The competition encourages early career engineers to develop their communication and presentation skills, and Oliver captured judges’ imagination with his take on the evolution, physics and future of stealth technology.
After reading Ben Rich’s book ‘Skunk Works’, Oliver began looking into the history of stealth technology in the UK. He identified a seismic shift in the approach to this technology, from the mass-produced aircraft in the 70s, to the computer modelled marvels of the 90s.
Oliver said: “Ben Rich helped demystify the science of stealth. He described how engineers combined radar, advanced materials and computer modelling, to create capability that allowed aircraft to be completely undetected. That made it feel much more accessible for me, and I’m fascinated by what the future of digital stealth could be.”
Although Oliver’s exploration of stealth was diverse – taking in the history of stealth in the air, on sea and land, and in the current digital age of AI – a common thread ran through his presentation; a sense of relishing the opportunities that emerge when you challenge conventional wisdom of what is possible.
Oliver said: “It was originally conceived that no aircraft would ever be able to beat radar because radars were improving so much, and then suddenly there was this complete change in ideology, because scientists began seeing the possibilities offered by mathematical modelling and computer modelling, which takes us up to the present day.
“Stealth design has increasingly relied on computers – not only to shape aircraft, but also to provide critical flight controls that enable inherently unstable designs to be driven by physics rather than traditional aerodynamic requirements. Now, it has gone even further to support the evolution of digital stealth, with electronic countermeasures and tactics becoming a fundamental part of the design for stealth. So stealth today is less about shape alone and more about intelligence and sensor technology to outmanoeuvre evolving radar systems, maintaining the ongoing ‘cat and mouse’ dynamic of electronic warfare.”
Oliver now aims to continue working in digital stealth and advanced technology at Leonardo in Luton, aligning his apprenticeship in systems engineering with his passion for advancing aerospace capabilities.
The concepts that he has been exploring for his presentation align with Leonardo’s work in the next generation of digital stealth and advanced sensing for programmes such as the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). For more than a decade, Leonardo has been playing a central role as part of a national endeavour to develop the UK's future combat air system (FCAS) capability