I swear if I read one more person claiming the Russians are hiding some super-advanced plasma stealth I am going to go insane.Plasma Stealth is no different than the X-Ray Laser from the SDI Program, something that sounds scary but is unfeasible to operate.
And is thus pure fantasy meant to intimidate the other guy.
Anyone with some basic knowledge in physics knows the system won't work. Allow me to correct one error I made in a previous post, plasmas do not have a charge they are neutral, it is only the individual ions that have a charge however balanced numbering means no net charge.
With no net charge to the plasma there is no way to keep it attracted to the body of the aircraft unless russians have also developed the technology for active force fields. (Ha!)
Ionizing a large quanitity of gas would require an enormous and continuous supply of power as it would have to do so constantly as it moved through the sky. Phase shift leads plasma to inherently be colored leaving a large visual footprint. In addition to this you have a big heat signature regardless of the temperature of the plasma because you have to have something on board generating the energy for it. With that kind of demand a battery simply wouldn't cut it.
Also lets take into account that the atmosphere contains oxygen, nitrogen and CO2. Does anyone here actually know what a plasma is? A plasma is a substance that has been heated so far beyond its boiling point that the individual atomic nuclei are split from the electrons allowing the electrons to flow freely through the medium as ions.
If you wanted to turn the atmosphere around the aircraft into plasma you would have to produce so much heat that nothing short of a fully-heat shielded (and thus very heavy) aircraft is going to survive it, and it is still going to leave a massive IR signature. And such a heat shielded craft wouldnt be able to handle it for so long. Your only other option would be to store plasma on board in some form which would give you how long? A few seconds? If you want me to I'll do the math for you, I'd wager even with a Tu-160 storing the plasma you'd have at best a few seconds.
Also lets not forget that plasma is a form of matter, radiating energy due to its relative heat. Plasma around orbiting rentry craft disappears from radar because the field of plasma disperses the radar beams away from the source much like a stealth shaped aircraft. Radar is effected by air speed and denisty this is why supersonic aircraft are easier to detect than slow ones.
Also on heat, heat invariably transfered from a warmer medium to a colder one. This means that unless you are carrying a supply of plasma on board you are going to radiate heat. See above for problems about supply and heating of atmospheric air.
Also lets not forget that since the development of modern Pulse-Doppler and AESA radars the systems can in fact track objects as they come in through the atmosphere. You can't create a bubble of air (or plasma) moving that fast that is not going to show up on some kind of sensor system.
Also lets not forget if you did somehow create this bubble of plasma that didn't show up on a radar the bubble is going to be shot to hell the moment you fire a weapon as it is going to disrupt the bubble.
Now lets say somehow you were able to keep a plasma on board in sufficient quanity to properly cloak the aircraft for any length of time. For this to work its going to have to be a medium that is either already plasma, gas, or liquid.
We'll use Dry Ice as it would be a likely candidate for such an operation.
Dry Ice could be vented and heated in some form to produce plasma then vented out of the aircraft. Once it is heated it will vent as plasma, however thermodynamics dictate that once in the atmosphere it is going to rapidly cool back into a normal gas which is going to leave a dense air pocket which will show up even on a Doppler Radar.
If you store the plasma as a pre-existing plasma you're not going to be able to carry very much as plasma per atom require even more volume than gasses. If you compress it to carry a large supply this compression will cause it to become gas liquid or solid. (Nuclear powerplants utilize water heated many times beyond its boiling point that never vaporizes because it is under compression). Thus you are still going to have to heat it up to get an effect (see previous points) And if you store it as plasma you are going to have a piss-poor amount of it to work with by volume.
If you store the plasma as a liquid you are going to have to flash-fry it through two stages to become plasma putting off an inordinate amount of heat.
If you use a "cold" plasma you are restricted to the gas or plasma option as the energy required to keep it liquid or frozen to allow for storage by volume would be like carrying a very large (and heat generating) refrigitator in the aircraft with you.
There is only one other possible