The history of stealth technology is largely circumscribed by the word itself - the popularity of the word ‘stealth’ only arose in the post-World War II years, when the victorious powers wanted to gain an unparalleled technological superiority, that will leave any prospective enemies completely debilitated - by being completely undetectable, which allows first-strike tactics to be successfully delivered. The 1950s is also the time when the military complexes around the world came to acknowledge that stealth technology is not a single-piece technology - it is a collective application of sophisticated technologies that aids an object or person to evade detection from the standpoint of the three senses: auditory, visual, and thermal.



Stealth as an idea, however, can be traced to the human experimentation with camouflaging. Camouflaging, or the disguising of military personnel, equipment, or installations by painting or covering them with fabric or other materials that breaks the outline of the object, or to make them blend in with their surroundings. To be precise, camouflage is a subsidiary mode of stealth, specifically within the visible electromagnetic spectrum. Camouflage as a vital tool to achieving the condition of being stealth will be discussed in-depth in Present Military applications.