Chinese radar may trap stealth planes Matthew Campbell, Washington
THE Pentagon has ordered an urgent investigation to
determine whether its most advanced stealth jet fighters have
been rendered obsolete by a simple radar system being
developed by the Chinese, according to intelligence sources.
Fears that enemies might crack the radar-evading
technology, over which America enjoys a monopoly, have
mounted after an F-117 stealth fighter was shot down over
Serbia this year. Classified reports that China has used
computer advances to build a new type of radar have
increased the fears.
Defence experts say the Chinese, who have been accused of
stealing American military secrets to develop their nuclear
programme, have used relatively simple, home-made
technology to create a radar system known as passive
coherent location.
Yet, if successful, it could make the world's most
sophisticated and expensive aircraft redundant, ending a
quest that has preoccupied Chinese and Russian military
scientists ever since the first stealth fighters took to the skies
in the 1970s.
"A review has been ordered with some urgency of all the
data on this," said a source familiar with intelligence briefings.
"It could have significant strategic implications."
Concerns about the radar capabilities coincide with growing
alarm in the Pentagon at Beijing's increasing military
co-operation with Russia, which is expected to sell billions of
dollars' worth of weaponry to China in the next five years.
Instead of emitting electro-magnetic energy pulses, which
bounce off enemy aircraft and betray their shape and size,
the new system is said to detect them by analysing
fluctuations in commercial television and radio s…
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