Stephen Chen
China has successfully flight-tested what could be the world’s first artificial intelligence-powered radar system for a military aircraft.
According to the limited data disclosed, an AI-enhanced radar system aboard an unidentified aircraft achieved near-perfect target tracking performance despite facing advanced, sophisticated jamming.
In the test, when conventional radar systems failed to maintain consistent contact, losing the target in around one-quarter of engagement time, the AI boosted the detection rate to near perfection.
“Radar target tracking continuity has improved from the original 70 per cent-80 per cent to over 99 per cent,” wrote project lead scientist Zhang Jie with the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation’s 14th Research Institute in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese journal Informatisation Research last month.
“A paradigm shift in radar design philosophy is on the horizon.”
The Nanjing-based institute is China’s premier radar development hub and the cradle of its military radar industry.
The advance addresses a long-standing challenge for China’s aerial forces. While the PLA Navy has made strides in deploying AI-assisted radar on surface vessels – systems that helped maintain tracking during aggressive electromagnetic suppression by the US military – the constraints of airborne platforms have slowed progress.
Space, power and processing limitations in fighter jets made on-board AI integration far more difficult than in larger, ship-based systems. But this trial suggests those barriers have now been overcome.
A big factor in modern warfare is what military theorists call “electromagnetic fog” – a dense, ever-shifting barrage of signals, jamming pulses, stealth platforms and decoys that makes traditional radars increasingly obsolete.
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