China puts phantom space force concept to the test with aim to swamp enemy missile defences

Name: Chinese hypersonic weapons test ‘has all of our attention’, US General Mark Milley says
Uploaded: 2023-02-20T12:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 6 s
Description: Chinese hypersonic weapons test ‘has all of our attention’, US General Mark Milley says

Chinese military engineers aim to develop tactic that creates a swarm of fake target signals from space

Idea has been simulated on a computer and will proceed to tackle engineering challenges, according to study

Reading Time:3 minutes

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A Chinese military engineering team is working on developing a “phantom space strike”, a new tactic to create fake signals from space to overwhelm an enemy’s missile defences. Image: Nasa/Shutterstock Images

Stephen Chenin Beijing

Published: 8:30pm, 20 Feb 2023Updated: 5:52am, 21 Feb 2023

A team of Chinese military engineers is developing a “phantom space strike” – a new tactic to overwhelm missile defences by creating a swarm of fake target signals from space.

They revealed the project to the public for the first time this month while announcing they had conducted a proof-of-concept computer simulation.

The modelling results were positive and the project would move to the next stage to tackle engineering challenges, the team said in a paper published in the Chinese-language Journal of Electronics and Information Technology on February 10.

In the simulation, a ballistic missile was launched against an enemy protected by a state-of-the-art missile defence system. The missile did not carry a nuclear or conventional warhead.

After reaching an altitude above the atmosphere, the missile released three small spacecraft.

02:06

Chinese hypersonic weapons test ‘has all of our attention’, US General Mark Milley says

Radio interference instruments on the spacecraft picked up enemy radar network signals and sent back phantom signals making the unarmed missile appear to be a much bigger threat than it really was.

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