A company claims to have created a quantum radar that can detect stealth aircraft and see through the radar jamming used to hide warplanes.
Defence giant China Electronics Technology Group Corporation displayed the prototype at the Zhuhai聽air show last week.
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Stealth aircraft avoid detection by redirecting most of a radar system鈥檚 radio waves, which usually reflect off their surface and reveal their location.
In theory, a quantum radar can overcome this by using two streams of entangled photons. These are pairs of photons that have a weird connection so a change to one affects the other, even if they are miles apart.
The first photon stream is sent out,聽like a standard radar beam, and聽bounces off objects in the sky. The second stream remains inside the聽system.
Because the photons are entangled, the returning photons can聽be matched with those in the stay-at-home stream, so all background noise can be filtered out. This includes deliberate interference, such as radar jamming or spoofing signals put out to confuse radar. What is left is a clear image of the target, with no extraneous signal.
鈥淲ithout being able to take the lid off what has been shown here, we can鈥檛 be sure if this is an elaborate hoax,鈥� says Alan Woodward at the University of Surrey, UK.
But China has form with quantum technology, having surprised the world with the speed at which it developed the first quantum satellite communications. If the quantum radar is real, it would be the first of its kind.
This technology would significantly reduce the ability of stealth aircraft, such as some bombers, to remain undetected, says Justin Bronk at UK defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute. Although not necessarily grounding operations, it could make them more dangerous.
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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淨uantum radar can even spot stealth planes鈥�
