China has developed new anti-stealth radar material

Asia-Pacific, News November 12, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Chinese scientists have created a special material that could make stealth jets and ships even harder to detect by using current anti-stealth radar.

Whereas stealth materials already exist that effectively absorb most of the specialized microwaves that are fired into the sky by radars to detect aircraft, it has always been too thick and heavy for modern jets to carry, a report published Thursday in the Journal of Applied Physics said.

Now, scientists in China have developed a far thinner and lighter stealth material. “Our proposed absorber is almost 10 times thinner than conventional ones,” Wenhua Xu, one of the team members from China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said in the report.

The material has an ultra-thin absorbing surface called an active frequency-selective surface absorber (AFSS).

This is made up of arrays of patterned conductors fitted with two common types of circuit elements known as resistors and varactors.

They are arranged flat and have a thin dielectric (electrical insulator) on the back that reflects incident microwaves according to their frequency.

‘Our proposed absorber has achieved broadband tunability and ultra-thin film simultaneously.’

The technology itself is not top secret, having been published in a scientific paper, meaning it will not take security services monitoring the skies by complete surprise if it’s ever used for military aircraft.

Modern radar use arrays of antennas that direct microwave energy to ‘see through’ clouds, fog or smoke and estimate an object’s size so it can be identified, DefenseOne reported.

The new technology demonstrates how China rapidly is catching up in an area of defense the U.S. traditionally has dominated.