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Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (Stealth Bomber)

The Chinese military says it has invented quantum radar, a breakthrough which, if true, would render the hundreds of billions of dollars the Us has invested into stealth technology obsolete. Similar the original invention of radar, the advent of modern artillery, or radio communications, quantum radar could fundamentally transform the scope and nature of war.

There'southward only i problem — the Chinese probably haven't invented information technology, and claims that they have should exist met with extreme skepticism.

Conventional radar transmits radio waves and measures the betoken returned when those waves bounce off objects. The time between when y'all transmit a point and when yous notice that information technology has struck something tells you how far away an object is. The Doppler shift on the returned radar bespeak tells you how fast it is moving. You tin can measure out the precise location of an object by using a network of detectors to monitor betoken intensity from multiple locations at the same time.

Quantumradar

How a quantum radar works

Quantum radar would exploit quantum entanglement, the phenomena that occurs when ii or more particles are linked, even when separated by a meaning corporeality of physical space. In theory, a radar installation could fire one group of particles towards a target while studying the second grouping of entangled particles to decide what happened to the first group. The potential advantages of this approach would exist enormous, since information technology would allow for extremely low-energy detection of approaching enemy craft. Unlike conventional radar, which relies on an ability to analyze and find a sufficiently strong signal return, quantum radar would let us direct observe what happened to a specific group of photons. Since we haven't invented cloaking devices just yet, this would seem to obviate a great deal of investment in various stealth technologies.

Mainland china is claiming to have adult a single-photon radar detection organisation that tin can operate at a range of 100km, more 5x that of a lab-based system developed terminal year by researchers from the UK, U.s.a., and Germany. Research into quantum radar has been ongoing for at least a decade, but there are meaning hurdles to be solved. You demand a unmarried photon source for a breakthrough radar to exist effective, and the ability of such a device to operate at scale, in the appropriate wavelengths, and at effective ranges are all topics of active enquiry. There is a vast gap betwixt engineering we could theoretically build, and technology nosotros have avant-garde to the point of being practically useful.

China's official story leaves out all of the pertinent details regarding the nature of the photon source, the size, shape, and nature of the 100km-distant target. At that place'due south besides the practical question of whether any country would officially denote this kind of breakthrough at all. While the general development of radar as a method for detecting both shipping and ships was a known topic of research prior to WW2, specific technological developments became closely guarded secrets one time the state of war began. The fact that Cathay is willing to talk about the achievement, even in vague terms, makes information technology less likely that the project achieved a meaningful breakthrough.