Chinese Tech Breakthrough Could Make Stealth Technology Obsolete

For years, the Chinese government has been working on radar systems that are aimed at rendering enemy stealth fighters obsolete.

On Sunday, a Chinese company specializing in military tech claimed to have developed a type of radar that is able to detect stealth planes at a significantly safe distance, according to South China Morning Post.

The reported breakthrough by China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) makes use of a scientific phenomenon known as quantum entanglement which is said to be able to identify presence of a foreign object as far as 100 kilometers.

Quantum scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei aided the Intelligent Perception Technology Laboratory of the 14th Institute in CETC in the development of the tech. The university has also been instrumental to several other quantum technology breakthroughs.

In quantum radar technology, it is theorized that an object will change its quantum properties after receiving photonic signals. The quantum radar can easily detect stealth aircraft and is highly resistant to being jammed.

CETC announced on its website that China’s first “single-photon quantum radar system” had “important military application values” because it used entangled photons to identify objects “invisible” to traditional radar systems.

The company revealed that their recent field test proved that the radar system’s entangled photons achieved a potential range that is five times more powerful than the prototype developed last year by researchers from Canada, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Nanjing University physicist and expert on quantum radar studies, Professor Ma Xiaosong, said he had “not seen anything like this in an open report.”

Projects that develop quantum radar systems, such as the one funded by America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and others separately initiated by private companies such as Lockheed Martin, have also been in the works.

In 2012, a similar project by a team of researchers from the University of Rochester in New York created a radar system based on polarized photons.