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China tests stealth ‘invisibility cloaks’ on regular fighter jets

Military experiments with metamaterials designed to fool radars with wave-bending powers but observers say there’s still a long way to go before the technology is ready for the battlefield

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China is testing a metamaterial on some of its non-stealth military jets to see if the technology can help the aircraft evade radars. Photo: Felix Wong
Stephen Chenin Beijing

China is testing an “invisibility cloak” on non-stealth military jets to help them evade radar detection, according to scientists involved in the project. 

If successful, the technology could quickly boost the combat strength of the jets, the researchers say. 

But others say the technology was difficult to mass produce, limited to a small range of radar bandwidths and would need to be combined with other devices to be truly effective. 

The technology involves the use of a “metamaterial”, a fabricated layer comprising microscopic structures similar to integrated circuits. The metamaterial can alter the way radio waves bounce off its surface to create a ghost image or minimise echo on a radar, helping hide the aircraft in flight with greater efficiency. 

The metamaterial was developed by a research team at the State Key Laboratory of Millimetre Waves in Southeast University in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. It was being tested on aircraft at a major military aircraft production base in Shenyang, Liaoning province, a researcher in the laboratory confirmed.  

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