Credit: Weibo On August 26, Chinese military scientists announced the Air Force’s plasma stealth technology, using frequency-shifting beams to create ‘electromagnetic fog’ that renders early-warning aircraft nearly undetectable, according to South China Morning Post.
Tested on KJ-3000 AWACS planes, the system corrupts radar signatures into static-like noise, causing the enemy tracking errors to ballon from meters to kilometers.
The KJ-3000 is the unofficial – widely accepted – desifgnation for China’s next-gen Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft. The KJ-3000 is based on the airframe of the Xian Y-20 strategic transport aircraft – China’s largest indigenously built aircraft.
For years, AEW&C aircraft were the flying command centers, but their powerful radar emissions made them prime targets.
Now, China’s new strategy no longer focuses on hiding these planes altogether but instead confuses adversaries when listening to radio emissions and masking them.
How Did China Get Stealth Technology
The breakthrough lies in a system called frequency diverse array (FDA). Instead of traditional radars that broadcast steady, easy-to-track signals, the FDA subtly alters the frequency of every radar beam, creating a sort of “electromagnetic fog” around the plane’s position.
Engineers compare it to a choir where each voice sings the same tune at a different pitch, creating a sound that’s hard to locate. That’s how plasma stealth technology corrupts the radar signature into what looks like static noise to enemy systems.
The interference makes it even harder for meta-material radar systems. Typically, traditional detection relies on stable radar signals, but FDA disrupts this.
Simulations show that tracking errors rise from meters to kilometers, and targeting becomes nearly impossible. One instance of where it is being applied is in the KJ-3000, China’s latest stealth AWACS aircraft. It’s designed to actively blind and confuse enemy tracking.
“FDA can create a new paradigm of electromagnetic offence and defence – ‘detecting while jamming, positioning while deceiving,” said lead scientist Wang Bo in a paper in Aero Weaponry.
China Stealth Detection Device to Early Warn Aircrafts
China’s next-generation plasma stealth technology system doesn’t just hide, it masquerades.
The aircraft can sense how its radar signals are being received and modify them in mid-air. That enables it to stay in touch with friends while misleading enemies marking a big improvement for Chinese stealth fighter jet ops.
According to researchers, the technique is based on what is known as space-time-frequency cooperative anti-passive detection. It overflows radar tracking equipment by mixing up the timing and angle of the signal in flight. It copies the signals of a jammer, making it very hard to tell the false from the real.
China’s efforts in the industry come after developments like on-board plasma generation systems and research into invisibility cloak tech, where radar waves are bent around the aircraft rather than being reflected.
It’s a concept that falls under the general science of the physics of electromagnetic cloaking, which has developed a long way in recent years.
However, plasma stealth technology has its issues.
One Beijing-based radar expert who was not involved in the project said that while promising, the system demands extremely high-speed computing and extremely precise synchronization, something that can be disrupted by hardware defects or battlefield conditions.
But if these difficulties are solved, China can completely reverse the situation in electronic warfare.
“In future conflicts, control of the electromagnetic spectrum may no longer depend on brute power or perfect stealth, but on who can best manipulate the information,” an expert added.
That manipulation will soon give Chinese stealth fighter jets and spy planes an edge unseen, and undetected, on modern battlefields. At the center of it all is plasma stealth technology, which is possibly no longer science fiction but battlefield ready. From disrupting counter stealth radar to enabling hidden command centers in the sky, this technology may define the next generation of air combat.
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