China has developed the ability to monitor all radio frequencies at once. No hiding place on the battle leader
A team of Beijing scientists said they had achieved seamless, wide-bandwidth, real-time electromagnetic spectrum monitoring and analysis capability for the first time , leaving the enemy completely exposed during a conflict. This means that the Chinese military will be able to know every electromagnetic source on the potential battlefield , from amateur radio to telecommunications satellite, simultaneously.
According to researchers, the Chinese military will be able to use this technology to detect and lock on to enemy signals at unprecedented speeds, decode the physical parameters of these signals almost instantly, and effectively suppress them, all while ensuring the smooth flow of its own communications.
The details of this revolutionary technology were published by Yang Kai, professor of the School of Information and Electronics at the Beijing Institute of Technology , and his team in an article published on January 17 in the Chinese academic journal Radio Communications Technology.
In the article, Yang wrote that the new type of electromagnetic spectrum monitoring equipment is “small in size, with high performance and low power consumption.”
Due to the enormous amount of data to be processed during combat, this technology was previously considered a pipe dream.
According to scientists, this technology will cause “a profound change in the art of war”. In recent months, civilian weather radars in the South China Sea have reported mysterious interference, leading some military experts to suspect a secret "dance" between Chinese and American naval forces. While an actual war has not yet been fought, an electronic conflict may already be underway.
Chinese electronic warfare system
But while China was once at a disadvantage, it now appears to be gaining ground and its military is reported to be becoming increasingly assertive. Chinese state media reported last month that the new Type 055 destroyer single-handedly blocked the advance of an entire U.S. carrier strike group, something unimaginable in the past.
Although Chinese propaganda may contain exaggerated elements, the officers and soldiers interviewed revealed an important detail: they activated equipment emitting electromagnetic waves, including high-power phased array radar, and firmly locked onto a number of targets, including aircraft based on US aircraft carriers, in an offensive and defensive electronic warfare competition.
Details on the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) electronic warfare capabilities are still scarce. But research by Yang's team, which is deeply involved in the creation of this secret arsenal, offers insight into the progress China has made in this field.
Signals outside this range, especially high-frequency ones, are typically monitored via sampling scans. With this method, there is a good chance of missing some signal, but Yang's team claims that the new Chinese equipment has extended the frequency range of real-time monitoring seamlessly into the gigahertz zone, which covers the frequency used by amateur radio operators and even Elon Musk's Starlink satellites. This means that even if the US military suddenly switches to civilian frequencies and emits a pulsed signal in a short period of time, it can be captured and analyzed by the Chinese military. As a result, wireless communications between U.S. military units could be affected or disrupted due to Chinese suppression.
To achieve this broader capability, scientists said they have developed a series of new signal processing chips.
On the battlefield there is not only a multitude of military units such as satellites, aircraft, drones, radar stations, tanks and infantry, but there are also civilian structures and electrical devices that emit electromagnetic signals.
When all these signals are captured by high-performance antennas, they produce a huge data stream. Previous digital processing chips were unable to handle such a workload.
But Yang said the new chips can effectively divide this flood of data into smaller streams before computational processing. This reduces the processing load and makes it possible to simultaneously monitor a large number of signal sources over a wide frequency range.
Scientists also renewed the structure of the electromagnetic signal filter that works with the chip, and thanks to new mathematical methods, improved the working efficiency of the processor without sacrificing any signal. The surveillance device must also conduct automatic analysis of the processed signals to obtain high-value information, such as physical parameters of the signals, modulation methods and identification of friendly or civilian sources. Traditional methods were unable to immediately provide reliable analysis.
To address this challenge, Yang's team has introduced artificial intelligence (AI) into the process of analyzing the most critical data, and at least two different AI technologies are employed to work closely together to solve the various challenges encountered.
The integration of internal chips and artificial intelligence has allowed the Chinese military to achieve unprecedented information perception capabilities at a lower cost. Yang's team wrote in the paper that, even in the presence of enemy jamming, it is able to identify enemy weak points from strong background noise and effectively counter them.
This news highlights how no tactical advantage is such forever and how the evolution of the defense is always a competition, in this case between those who want to remain hidden and those who want to see clearly. This system can also be deceived, for example by saturating it with false true messages, which give false indications; indeed, knowing that it exists, false ad hoc profiles can be created. However this is a sign that the tactical position of a military force can never be taken as given.
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The article China has developed the ability to monitor all radio frequencies at once. No hide on the battle leader comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-cina-ha-sviluppato-la-capacita-di-monitorare-tutte-le-frequenze-radio-contemporaneamente-nessun-nascondiglio-sul-capo-di-battaglia/ on Tue, 06 Feb 2024 09:00:44 +0000.