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China's 14th China International Aerospace Expo 2022 was held in Zhuhai, and the various high-tech fighter jets and dazzling fighter stunts displayed at the expo deeply attracted the attention of aerospace and military enthusiasts from all over the world.
Militarily, China is no longer the poor boy who has never seen the world decades ago, but has become a military power that is truly in a leading position in the world in "science and technology".
In the past, the competition of military power between countries may come from how much "firepower" they have, such as the number of missiles and nuclear weapons. After entering the 21st century, the self-confidence of a country's military strength has changed from "quantity" to "quality".
The increase in the value of force brought about by high technology cannot be calculated by the simple number of "firepower". And there is a military technology in China that is ahead of the United States, which annoys the United States.
The research and development of this technology has turned the stealth fighter that the United States has invested heavily in into a pile of scrap iron. What is such a powerful military technology? It is what gives Western countries a headache, China's anti-stealth radar.
Rampant American stealth aircraft
Since ancient times, all countries have known the truth that in diplomacy, military power represents the right to speak of the country.
Therefore, any country that is interested in finding a voice on the earth and striving for its own independent development, regardless of its own economic situation, will not easily relax its research on military reserves and military science and technology.
Moreover, because military science and technology are different from science and technology that generally involve economic development, the core technology of military science and technology will adopt a more hidden and independent development model in various countries, and it is too late to keep secrets and will not be easily shared.
As a result, this situation of mutual independence creates the reality that countries have limited knowledge of each other's true military power.
In this case, when the United States first showed off their high-tech armed fighters, the countries of the world were dumbfounded. And this American's high-tech military show was the 1991 Gulf War.
At the beginning of the war, the Iraqi military and even everyone in the world thought that Saddam's well-stocked tanks, missiles, and artillery were enough to fight the United States. Even the Americans themselves were mentally prepared for a large number of casualties.
However, when the war really began, the Iraqi military realized that they were not fighting the same level as the United States.
The precision-guided missiles issued by the United States can lock the strike accuracy to a range of 10 meters, and American fighters can easily break into the airspace and become invisible killers. The two armies are at war, and the United States fights Iraq like a clairvoyant beating a blind man who is blind and deaf.
It was also this Gulf War that further sounded the alarm for China, which is far away in Asia but has always had the wisdom of "preparing for a rainy day". Through this war, Chinese people of insight have clearly recognized the important role of "military science and technology" in future wars.
Today's U.S. stealth fighters are in Iraqi airspace, and tomorrow U.S. stealth fighters may threaten China's territory.
Since then, China's Beidou Global Positioning System and Anti-Stealth Radar programs have further accelerated the pace of research.
The difficult road to research and development of anti-stealth radar
Are American fighters really some kind of stealth? Of course not, the so-called stealth fighters are actually through special coating materials or aircraft using special structures and flight speeds, so that enemy radars cannot detect. So strictly speaking, stealth fighters are invisible in radar monitoring systems, not true vision invisibility.
Therefore, if we want to counter this stealth fighter, what our country needs to do is to develop a more accurate and powerful radar system against stealth. Meter-wave radar is the predecessor of microwave radar, and for many countries, the higher accuracy and better battlefield adaptability of microwave radar are obviously more worthy of development and investment.
Therefore, most countries have chosen to concentrate on the development of microwave radar, abandoning the technologically backward meter-wave radar.
However, in this case, under the neglect of most countries, China's excellent researchers have discovered the advantages of meter-wave radar with a unique eye.
The research and development of stealth fighter technology is more for microwave radar detection, so in this way, meter-wave radar has become the biggest vulnerability of stealth fighters and has become the most effective "anti-stealth radar". Wu Jianqi, a pioneer in China's anti-stealth radar research, is one of such outstanding military researchers.
The year Wu Jianqi graduated from his master's degree coincided with the year before the Gulf War, and the young Wu Jianqi aspired to become a person who made contributions to China's defense science and technology from an early age.
After graduating from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China with a master's degree, Wu Jianqi entered the 38th Research Institute, specializing in the research and development of radar.
At that time, with Wu Jianqi's knowledge, he had many employment options. At that time, radar research was more like an unknown field, and many people advised him to change jobs.
However, Wu Jianqi was bent on contributing to the country with what he learned and saw, ignored the temptation of the outside world, and plunged into the radar research career on the mainland.
In 1999, a major incident occurred that angered all Chinese. U.S. stealth fighters carried two bombs and dropped them precisely on the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, where the Yugoslav Embassy, which represents the dignity of a country, was instantly blown into rubble, injuring dozens of staff and killing three Chinese staff.
The US authorities claimed that this was a "mistake", but such a suffocating excuse could not calm the angry hearts of more than one billion Chinese people. These bombs from American stealth fighters also deeply shocked Wu Jianqi.
As a scientific research leader in the front line of national military science and technology, Wu Jianqi knows that the United States' unscrupulousness at this moment is to take advantage of its own technological leadership.
That stealth fighter that comes and goes like a ghost will one day threaten the motherland and threaten the people. Therefore, at that time, Wu Jianqi silently made up his mind that he must successfully develop an anti-stealth radar, so that these arrogant stealth fighters in the United States will become a useless pile of scrap iron.
In order to break the stealth function of the US fifth-generation fighter, Wu Jianqi is determined to start with the meter-wave radar abandoned by various countries.
Meter-wave radar was the primary means of detecting enemy aircraft until 1950. But the reason why meter-wave radar has been abandoned by countries is mainly because it itself has great flaws.
The biggest problem with meter-wave radar is that it needs to carry a transmitter by itself, and every time it works, it needs to turn on the microwave transmitter. Although meter-wave radar can detect enemy aircraft, its microwave transmitters themselves are also very easy to detect by enemy aircraft.
With the continuous update and iteration of radar technology, meter-wave radar with difficult defects was slowly eliminated.
But in the 1999 Kosovo War, the first time a U.S. stealth fighter was shot down by an enemy was because it was spotted by meter-wave radar.
Although there may be some coincidence of such an event, it still injects more confidence into scientists like Wu Jianqi who are determined to study anti-stealth radar.
The starting point of the mainland's radar technology is very low, and when it began independent research and development, it did not have enough research funds or relevant senior talents, and it was several generations behind the radars of other countries in terms of technology. The development of radar requires the acquisition of a large amount of experimental data, and Wu Jianqi and his team work hard in the laboratory day after day, year after year.
Since jumping headlong into radar research and development, Wu Jianqi has dedicated all his enthusiasm and time to the country. Over the years, Wu Jianqi rarely returned home, and he was unable to even take care of his parents at home. And Wu Jianqi's family also understands his ambition to fight for the country very well and silently supports him.
In 2003, when SARS was raging in China, in order to obtain accurate research data, Wu Jianqi and his team continued to go deep into the epidemic area to conduct experiments despite the danger. He also suffered a car accident on the experimental road and sadly lost his comrades who fought together.
After more than a decade of silent hard work, Wu Jianqi and his team's meter-wave radar have entered a new stage of multiple input and output.
By 2012, the shortcomings of the meter-wave radar's own microwave transmitter, which were easily exposed and the limited monitoring range, were overcome by Chinese researchers.
Although the design and coating of foreign stealth fighters are precisely set in anti-radar technology, they still cannot escape the fate of being exposed to the detection band of meter-wave radar.
China's anti-stealth radar technology has made great strides and has begun to emerge on the world military stage.
The artifact becomes scrap iron
When faced with everyone's questions, can China's meter-wave radar technology really deal with the increasingly powerful stealth fighters of the United States? China's anti-stealth meter-wave radar proved its power for the first time in a later head-to-head confrontation with the United States.
In 2013, the most advanced F-22 fighter in the United States at the time brazenly invaded mainland airspace with its top stealth technology. To the disappointment of the American stealth fighter, accustomed to nothing, the F-22 was detected by the mainland's radar as soon as it approached the mainland's airspace. This time, the meter-wave radar showed great power, allowing the most advanced stealth fighter in the United States to fall back in ashes.
Subsequently, China publicly released the flight trajectory of the US F-22 fighter detected by the mainland, giving the stealth fighter a fatal blow. The American stealth fighter, which once maintained the proud fighter of "zero discovery, zero shootdown", faced such a change, which can be described as angry and corrupt.
Since a huge amount of money has been invested in the research and development of stealth fighters, the United States is certainly not willing to let these efforts go to waste, so it has to increase investment again, and more than $2 billion has been invested in trying to further upgrade the research and development of stealth fighters.
So far, the arms competition of various countries has never stopped. Striving for independent research and development of science and technology in various fields, gaining advantages in more fields, and winning more voice rights for the country are the never-ending goals of Chinese scientists.
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