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Communications The Military China Science Technology

China's Quantum Radar Could Detect Stealth Planes, Missiles (popsci.com) 194

hackingbear shares a report from Popular Science: China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China's foremost military electronics company, announced that its groundbreaking quantum radar has achieved capability of tracking high altitude objects, likely by increasing the coherence time entangled photons. CETC envisions that its quantum radar will be used in the stratosphere to track objects in "the upper atmosphere and beyond" (including space). Quantum can identify the position, radar cross section, speed, direction and even "observe" on the composition of the target such as differentiating between an actual nuclear warhead against inflatable decoys. [...] Importantly, attempts to spoof the quantum radar would be easily noticed since any attempt to alter or duplicate the entangled photons would be detected by the radar. The news is an important illustration of a larger trend of Chinese advancement in the new, crucial area of quantum research. Other notable projects in China's quantum technology include the Micius satellite, and advances by Alibaba and the Chinese University of Science and Technology in a world record of entangling 18 photons (a quantum supercomputer would require about 50 entangled photons), such that China arguably leads the world in quantum technologies.
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China's Quantum Radar Could Detect Stealth Planes, Missiles

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  • I suspect it's not JASSM-ER-proof.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:28AM (#56939548)

      Why would you suspect that? Detection at an extreme early phase (think pre-launch even) allows for an unprecedented strategic window for countermeasures.

      If what you're saying is, "who cares if they can detect is at unprecedented distances and time-frames, our JASSM's are unstoppable" you're repeating an oft-made military blunder. Never fall back on your last presumed advantage when all others have been obviously stripped away. It's likely you simply aren't aware that your last advantage has (also) already been eliminated.

      If they've cracked quantum detection, don't be so confident about simple kinetic countermeasures -- let alone asymmetric tactics.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Their Lazer Rifle [youtube.com]

      turned out to be a lie.

      How can we believe in the lies provided by China

      • Perhaps we are playing "Two Lies, One Truth?"

        • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:22AM (#56940360)

          Perhaps we are playing "Two Lies, One Truth?"

          Perhaps... but, I'm not sure what they gain announcing these technologies- unless it's to set our researchers in a tizzy.

          If you really have technology to detect stealth planes on radar- why let the world know that- you've just lost your ace in the hole.

          • by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @09:01AM (#56940584) Homepage

            Obviously it is more about claiming developments in quantum technology, than stealth aircraft. To detect stealth aircraft all you need is high accuracy weather radar. You do not look for the aircraft, you look for it's impact on the atmosphere, pressure wave, changes in water density in the atmosphere and the exhaust itself. For searching this is far superior, because it presents a much, much larger target, a huge target. You don't see the plane but you see a very suspicious polluted cloud moving at hundreds of kilometre an hour, with out any regard to wind patterns and presenting a shock wave. How big a target, I'll bet it would be the best way to do over the horizon radar, not targeting the plane at all, just it's impact on the atmosphere, likely making over the horizon far easier and extend it's range far, far beyond line of site.

            So in reality stealthy planes are only stealthy if they don't move or start their engines and of course any plane is stealthy if it hides in a hanger. So why is everyone still paying for brand new stealthy, cough, cough, aircraft, the lust for profit and corruption. It's not like they don't know this and have not been aware of it for years, but when there is a buck in it for the military industrial complex, expect lies and the truth to be buried.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Detection does not equal an ability to target the aircraft. All stealth aircraft need to accomplish is to break some step in the "kill chain" between detection and a weapon arriving on target. Simply being detected without providing quality targeting information is not enough to obviate stealth aircraft. Also, your suggestion requires very precise information; likely weather radar cannot provide that resolution and detail. Even if it could, that's a massive amount of computing power required to monitor the

              • The point?

                . . . I'm not really even sure what the point is anymore. Theoretically, they're weapons of war. A saber to rattle to keep our enemies at bay. If shit hits the fan these things will be used to make strikes against Russia and China and their assets. But.... not really because if shits hitting the fan, nukes are flying, and no one gives a shit about planes. But they're fun to rattle and wave around. Whole generations of stealth planes are never utilized against the targets they're made to thwart.

          • It makes perfect sense if their strategic aim is to deter aggression from an over-confident superpower by raising the known materiel and thus political cost.
          • Perhaps... but, I'm not sure what they gain announcing these technologies- unless it's to set our researchers in a tizzy.

            If you really have technology to detect stealth planes on radar- why let the world know that- you've just lost your ace in the hole.

            This being China they will convince us they have it, we develop it, then they copy it. That will get them what they want in the longer run and for much cheaper.

          • If you know you will be attacked soon, keep it secret.
            If you do not expect to be attacked, boast about it loudly to let everyone know how much it would cost to attack.

      • How can we believe in the lies provided by China

        Why wouldn't you believe them? The Chinese lies are in direct proportion to the institutional dumbing-down of America.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:09AM (#56939338)

    We should implement Blockchain RADAR immediately as a response to this newfangled Quantum RADAR.

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:17AM (#56939522) Journal

      We should implement Blockchain RADAR immediately as a response to this newfangled Quantum RADAR.

      I know your idea sounds ridiculous on the surface, but if you use deep learning, you can put it in a div with Javascript. You couldn't before, but WebAssembly makes it possible. That's the advantage of Chinese hypertext.

      • That's the advantage of Chinese hypertext.

        Maelcum produced a white lump of foam slightly smaller than Case's head, fished a pearl-handled switchblade on a green nylon lanyard out of the hip pocket of his tattered shorts and carefully slit the plastic. He extracted a rectangular object and passed it to Case. `Thas part some gun, mon?'

        `No,' Case said, turning it over, `but it's a weapon. It's virus.'

        `Not on thisboy tug, mon,' Maelcum said firmly, reaching for the steel cassette.

        `A program. Virus program. Can't get into you, can't even get into you

        • Oh.....I think I just failed the Turing Test. Or the Hollywood Screenwriter test. Maybe those are the same thing.
    • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:20AM (#56939528)
      Meanwhile, congress and the stable genius in the Whitehouse are effectively reducing funding in the sciences and education. Pretty soon, the USA won't have enough people with the knowledge and skills to implement stuff like blockchain RADAR, let alone find out what stuff like Quantum RADAR is and how it works.
      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        I very much doubt the Chinese have quantum radar, however devaluing science in the U.S. is an active administration policy. Science produces facts, anathema Republicans and the Evangelical nutjobs who have sold their souls to him. And science doesn't sit well with many Democrats either.

    • We should implement Blockchain RADAR immediately as a response to this newfangled Quantum RADAR.

      At the very least it should have AI embedded and be made of carbon nanotubes.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:10AM (#56939340)
    • China: Oh, boy. W-what's wrong, Rick? Is it the quantum radar or something?
    • Rick: "Quantum radar"? Jesus, China. You can't just add a [burp]-- Sci-Fi word to a word and hope it means something.
      Huh, looks like something's wrong with the microverse battery.
      We're gonna have to go inside.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:18AM (#56939360)

    They get two coherent photons, bounce one of a plane, receive it again and compare it to the original photon to see what's changed.

    Obviously it's not 'quantum entanglement' anything, because if it was, the BOUNCED PHOTON AND COMPARISON PHOTON WOULD ALSO CHANGE by fuzzy action at a distance.

    Sort of the exact opposite, since you need the original photon to not change to match the bounced photon. So if entanglement actually worked, this system wouldn't work.

    Sounds like Interferometry 101.

    • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:17AM (#56939662) Homepage

      Quantum entanglement has only been demonstrated in labs or down shielded cables with high frequency EM , ie light. Not with radio waves and not in the outdoor enviroment. It sounds like someone in the chinese Ministry of Propaganda has slung together a load of terminology picked at random from an undergrad physics book to try and impress. Plus as others have said, if it really worked it would be about as top secret as you can get.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I tend to agree with the BS perception, but entanglement has been used in outdoor environment, and it is in fact not all that hard. The problem here is an increasing number of sensational announcements out of the quantum area that seemed to become more and more the norm even from supposedly respectable institutions - and the Chinese have by no means a monopoly for quantum BS. But they seem particularly susceptible to the bussines model of the sensationalist journals of the Nature franchise and the like that

      • Doesn't from space down to Earth [bbc.com] count as an outdoor environment?
      • but but but, their satellite has 18 entangled photons...That's almost halfway from building a quantum supercomputer that requires 50.
        If they build 3 such satellites they could entangle the whole world.
      • This article says that China has sent entangled particles from ground to a satellite: http://www.sciencemag.org/news... [sciencemag.org]
        • That's different. The idea is you have a bunch of entangled particles in the satellite and on the ground, then trigger a mass measurement of many to generate a one time crypto pad. Then send the encrypted data which is uncrackable unless someone steals the pad, which doesn't even exist until they need to send the satellite data.

    • I'm real shaky on quantum entanglement, but I think this would work by sending one entangled photon off never to be seen again and determining presence of an object and its distance from the time delay between firing the photon off and its mate changing state. Can that work in concept? Yes, I think probably it can.

      Can it work in practice using today's technology. I doubt it.

      Does it offer any advantage over conventional radar? Maybe, but my initial impression is that it is probably a complicated way to d

      • On second thought, a quantum radar working by observing the entangled photon retained at the radar tranmitter, could conceptually provide detection of stealth platforms that become stealthy by absorbing incoming photons and/or deflecting incoming signals off toward anywhere other than the radar's antenna.

      • I'm real shaky on quantum entanglement, but I think this would work by sending one entangled photon off never to be seen again and determining presence of an object and its distance from the time delay between firing the photon off and its mate changing state.

        No, that's just not how quantum entanglement works. How it works is you have two objects, in this case photons. Each of these photons has two possible relevant states, call them A and B (the state usually used for entanglement is the quantum spin, which for a photon is +1 or -1). Now you entangle them together, and you have two photons each in a superposition of states A and B, but in such a way that you know if you measure photon 1 and find it in A, you then know that photon 2 will be in state B (at that m

    • You make a good point, but backwards. Quantum entanglement is typically very sensitive and easily destroyed. The interaction between the photon and the target would probably destroy any entanglement unless the target was a very good mirror. So, it is the opposite of fuzzy action at a distance. The partner photon back at base is undisturbed but any quantum correlations with the photon that was sent to the target is destroyed so you just get a classical radar.

      I have a hard time guessing how "quantum" would he

  • Relevancy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:29AM (#56939386)
    Why would China brag about this new advanced technology, telling the world that a "quantum radar" is indeed possible? To mislead westerners? If they really achieved such amazing military weaponry success, wouldn't they better keep silent? Or maybe China is simply aware of their superiority in quantum fields, which is more worrying..
    • Re: Relevancy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:36AM (#56939424)

      Exactly and this is precisely a Chinese cultural trait that will bite them in the ass.

      You never let your enemy know your position. The Americans have war toys out there that haven't seen the light of day. Some generals are super eager to use them on an enemy.

      Take the stealth fighters of the late 80s for example. They didn't come out out no of the wood work until an actual battle happened during Desert Storm.

      The Chinese are bluffing because of the trade war and trying to spread FUD. They're screwed and they know it.

      Irony: when your enemy is screwing up, dont correct him. Keep showing off your military tech while we keep ours locked up and super secret, itching to add another 100 years to their century of shame.

      • Not sure why you refer to a Chinese century of shame.
        I currently live in Hong Kong and often am for work in mainland China.
        The dynamism, professionalism and quality orientation of chinese industry is obvious. I meet many talented, industrious professionals who absolutely deserve their success.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          Don't worry about it, he is projecting his own weaknesses on others. It is part of trumper syndrome (tm)

          The adherence to a leader who lies continually IS the cultural trait that will drag America into a century of shame

        • by sinij ( 911942 )
          Millions dead, poverty, and started rebuilding by making cheap goods for the West. If not for Nixon's mistake, China still would be a third-word country.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:14AM (#56939658)

        You never let your enemy know your position.

        Just tell them your velocity.

      • They didn't come out out no of the wood work until an actual battle happened during Desert Storm.

        There's a big difference in tactics between an actual war and in peace time. In peace time you brag about your superiority. In war time you use it as a surprise.

        • You brag about the superiority of the stuff they know you have e.g. drones and smart munitions. Not the stuff you have no reason to believe they know you have, like those stealth helicopters or whatever they were.
          • You're missing one, the stuff you don't have but you're making them think you do.

            And also I would argue that no one is doing the first thing you say. It's amazing the amount of cutting edge military development which shows up on discovery channel at present. The vast majority of secret projects and technologies are iterations of something existing. There's a big element of showing your enemies that you are technically superior and thus they shouldn't even try and oppose you.

          • It depends if your goal is to discourage a bellicose enemy to start a war, or if you are the bellicose party and hope to win a war.

            There are three ways to control the world : military power, economic power, and cultural power. The US is still, by far, the first military power, but its cultural power has crumbled since the 90s, and it will soon lose its place as the first economic power to the Chinese. Because of that, it would be logical for the US to rely more and more on its military power to maintain its

        • In peace time you brag about your superiority. In war time you use it as a surprise.

          Hmm, in this case we're talking about amazingly innovative and ultra scientifically challenging weaponry. A "we did it" show off gives the other parties a huge clue: it's possible then, feasible using today's technos, let's do it!

      • by ( 4475953 )

        So what, your butthurt reply is relatively irrelevant, as is the Chinese propaganda. Both the US and China are major nuclear powers, it's hard to find a realistic scenario in which a major conventional conflict wouldn't escalate into mutual nuclear destruction. Maybe in Taiwan or some regional conflict about minor islands? Other than that, MAD makes these advanced conventional military toys pointless for homeland defence, which kind of reveals why they are developed - projecting force and showing off one's

      • You never let your enemy know your position.

        No, you let them know your position when it is useful to let them know your position. You keep it a secret when that is more useful. There are times for each approach. If you are trying to deter an aggressor from attacking in the first place you don't keep it a secret that attacking you would be a bad idea. A deterrence kept a secret isn't a deterrence at all.

        You are quite right that many times it is useful to not show your full capabilities. But sometimes it is more valuable to let some information b

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          On the trade war, it's important to be clear about who the participants in the war are and what their role is. It's not the US vs. China; it's the US government against the Chinese government, with the Chinese government playing the game with the assets of the Chinese nation.

          It's not that the Communist Party is immune to popular economic pain, but the time scales of political effect are assymetrical. The party can afford to play a longer (although not indefinitely prolonged) game than US politicians can.

          Th

          • On the trade war, it's important to be clear about who the participants in the war are and what their role is. It's not the US vs. China; it's the US government against the Chinese government...

            Currently, it's looking like the US government against the rest of the world's economy. Tariffs against China, Canada, EU, and Mexico. We didn't join TPP. Certainly not trading with Russia. Looks like the US is not just playing chicken with China, but the rest of the world. We'll just have to deal, whereas everybody else can make up any trade with each other.

          • On the trade war, it's important to be clear about who the participants in the war are and what their role is. It's not the US vs. China; it's the US government against the Chinese government, with the Chinese government playing the game with the assets of the Chinese nation.

            It's governments playing games with OUR money. Both sides.

            This is a bit like invading Russia. It's a truism that invading Russia is a bad idea; like most truisms it's only true some of the time. Sure there are historical examples of disastrous invasions, but there are just as many examples of successful invasions.

            Name one successful invasion of Russia in the last 250 years.

            A trade war with the PRC isn't an intrinsically bad idea; it's a matter of timing.

            As a general proposition it's a terrible idea. At the end of the day the only result is going to be a lot of economic hardship for people like you and me on both sides of the ocean and elsewhere. The only time a trade war is a "good" idea is when one country is threatening a vital resource or asset. The US government should be more concerned with helping build up US business rather than

    • Re:Relevancy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:42AM (#56939446)

      Why would China brag about this new advanced technology, telling the world that a "quantum radar" is indeed possible?

      China has no interest in an actual military confrontation. They want deference, so perception of strength is more important than reality, and bragging about new military tech makes sense.

      • Re:Relevancy (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Megol ( 3135005 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:45AM (#56939596)

        Any intelligent state have no interest in "military confrontation" (read: war).

        • "intelligent state" is an oxymoron
        • Any intelligent state have no interest in "military confrontation" (read: war).

          States don't have intelligence. They are made up of people, who not only have the intelligence, but also have their own agendas. And for some of those people, it is a successful strategy to foment war, because they have ways to profit from it. That's not unintelligent behavior, just sociopathic.

      • by idji ( 984038 )
        It is well know that China closely collaborates with Anton Seilinger (inventer of teleportation) at the Viennese Academy of Sciences. They have entangled photons between Beijing and Vienna.
      • hahah I like it. Makes me think of all the countries around China that would send a gift and a "yes you are our emperor" letter, and then go on about their business. But the dynasty would add them to the map and claim this was the extent of their empire.
    • Re:Relevancy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:12AM (#56939646) Homepage Journal

      Why wouldn't they tell everyone? "Don't try to attack us, we have advanced defence systems that can detect your decoy missiles and track the real ones."

      Russia did the same with its announcement that it has hypersonic long range missiles and drone sub nukes that can't be stopped by any existing system. Both China and the US demonstrated their ability to shoot down satellites.

      And anyway, it's not like they could keep it a secret for very long. The US is presumably working on the same tech, and has a good idea of what the quantum radar test sites would look like on spy satellite photos.

      • Why wouldn't they tell everyone? "Don't try to attack us, we have advanced defence systems that can detect your decoy missiles and track the real ones."

        Russia did the same with its announcement that it has hypersonic long range missiles and drone sub nukes that can't be stopped by any existing system. Both China and the US demonstrated their ability to shoot down satellites.

        That's not exactly why Russia did that. First of all, they lie so much that you really can't take anything they say at face value. The hypersonic missile stuff could be true, but you and I aren't in a position to know for sure. They are, however, convinced that the West in general or the US specifically are looking for a way to nuke them and kill them all without any retaliation, so lying about hypersonic missiles could just be an attempt to keep the US from killing them as soon as it can do so. Now I d

        • Now I don't believe for a minute that the US really wants to nuke Russia and kill them all, but I definitely do think that Putin and his cronies think they do want just that.

          Putin and his cronies are not as dumb as you think they are. If they were, they wouldn't be in power. The goal is profit at others' expense, and nuking Russia isn't profitable. Conventional warfare might be, but both the USA and Russia understand that making war on the others' soil would likely escalate to a nuclear conflict, so these two nations have instead been fighting proxy wars in other countries. This demonstrates a clear willingness to avoid extensive property damage. You can't use those pretty pala

        • I remember all the nice presentation in the 80s about Reagan's SDI. Turned out the vast majority of it was utter bullshit. The reality is the US lie at least as much as Russia about its weapon technology.

          In the case hypersonic missiles, I believe Russia will very soon have them. Maybe not in 2020 like Putin said, but still very soon. Also, since I'm not American (I live in Canada), I tend to view the US as the bellicose country in the world, not Russia. I do believe the US might be tempted to attack Russia

          • I agree with most of what you say, US does appear bellicose, also unstable and without sense of direction (maybe direction changes constantly ex: support Taliban against Russia then later be against it. Saddam Hussein was taught in US military academies, we all know how he ended. Make a deal with Iran, break a deal with Iran. Assad is good, then a few years later suddenly Syrian government is bad. This constant cycle of past friends becoming enemies later. No consistency whatsoever.)

            However having followed

      • Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?

        Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

    • Why would China brag about this new advanced technology, telling the world that a "quantum radar" is indeed possible?

      We are not actively in any war with China other than a war of words. This isn't anything uniquely Chinese. Major US and other allied military advances are featured constantly on the likes of discovery channel. A radar that is able to detect steal planes? That featured in my electromagnetism course at university in incredible detail including the exact ranges at which it operates and the area that it covers in our country.

      Keeping very detailed military secrets gives you a great edge during an active war. Bra

    • by sad_ ( 7868 )

      the answer is, as always... it depends.

      some things you keep secret, others you make public. this isn't a weapon as such, but rather a defense system, that could be one reason to make it public.
      just look at the cold war, where US and USSR were keeping as many things secret from eachother as they revealed.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Think of it not in terms of what "China" wants or will benefit by, and more in terms of the individual careers of the people involved in the announcement.
    • Why would China brag about this new advanced technology, telling the world that a "quantum radar" is indeed possible?

      Let's assume this technology actually exists and works more or less as indicated. If you have a technology to plan to use as a deterrent, there is no point in keeping it a secret from the people you are trying to deter. A credible threat forces the other party to adjust their behavior. Keeping a weapon secret that you plant to user for deterrence is likely to be counterproductive.

      Now let's say that they don't have this technology and are bluffing. If they can get the other party to react to a non-existe

    • Re:Relevancy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @07:38AM (#56940144)
      Reagan have done the same thing with Star Wars program. BS and infeasible plans to make USSR waste time on a dead-end research.

      This is just like that.
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Sometimes a weapon works best if it achieves its effect without being used. Naval theorists call this "fleet in being" -- achieving sea control without leaving port simply by being there. But that's only effective if the enemy is aware your unbeatable super-dreadnought exists and believes it is where you want them to believe.

      Likewise, imagine the US-Soviet conflict if the Soviet Union had been unaware of the existence of the US nuclear stockpile. Sure, it would be better if the Soviets had certain misco

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "Why would China brag about this new advanced technology, telling the world that a "quantum radar" is indeed possible?'"

      So that every CIA and MI6 spy in China starts asking questions, looking terms up on their gov/mil computer system.
      US and UK "tourists", "teachers", "social media" video makers and "embassy" staff wondering around China change their routine to contact spies deep in China for new information on "quantum".
      The spies start to show in the bait they take and in what they ask about.
  • Ordinarily I would dismiss this as a deliberate distraction from stuff China can actually do. But I recall numerous examples from the Cold War between the US and Russia where the US poo-poo'd Russian abilities, but after the cold war ended it turned out Russian abilities really were superior. I'm not inclined to dismiss this out-of-hand no matter how science fictiony it sounds.
    • While I find what you're saying plausible, do you have any sources you can point to.

    • But I recall numerous examples from the Cold War between the US and Russia where the US poo-poo'd Russian abilities, but after the cold war ended it turned out Russian abilities really were superior

      I don't. I recall reading about many cases in which Germany had superior technology in WWII, and I recall that during the cold war Russia had to make cardboard tanks to make it look like they had a military which could resist an incursion by the USA for more than a few hours. Perhaps you're conflating the two?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    because I don't understand the practical difference between "quantum" radar and regular radar. The linked Popular Science explains the difference as regular radar reflects photons and the quantum radar bounces photons (from the target). Hmmm. I actually DO understand that a QR can't (theoretically) be spoofed by active countermeasures (since it should filter out non-entangled photons), but other than that, what's the difference? (I also understand that some of the quantum entanglement stuff may eventually l

  • Smells like BS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:00AM (#56939618)

    I am a researcher in the quantum communication area. Admittedly I can only judge by the poorly written Pop Science article, but the whole thing triggers my BS detector.

    "the coherence time entangled photons", "Quantum can identify..." - bad grammar is already a red flag.

    The whole "spoofing can be detected" sounds like someone made some confusion with QKD (quantum key distribution), a completely unrelated application of quantum technology.

    Finally, "a quantum supercomputer would require about 50 entangled photons"... Seriously, this is nonsense. I can't even.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Think of a spy for China in the US, UK looking over the mil contractors who are getting ready for action against China.
      The NSA and GCHQ will be tracking all traditional communications methods a spy could use to get large amounts of information back to China.
      Huge real time datasets surrounding readiness and disposition of US, UK locations and changed contractor movements.

      The main interest to China is the location of all translators the UK can trust in any generation that can be contacted for UK/GCHQ mil
    • To the quantum researcher - how would the quantum entanglement even be an advantage?

      Ok, so I can see how entanglement could avoid spoofing. Any other source of photons to the detector would be un-entangled and that could be detected. So, you can't fool the system. I'll give it that.

      How could this allow analysis of target composition? It doesn't seem that any photon-material interaction would be any different, comparing standard or quantum radar.

      How could this detect stealth any better than a
  • The Russians have been able to spot them for years using "radar" that looks at disturbances in background radiation.

    Anyway, why send a $1bn plane in to drop bombs when a cluster of supersonic or hypersonic missiles will do exactly the same thing for a few $m a piece.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      It's probably not true that stealth is obsolete -- yet. Stealth was never quite as good as people were sold on it being, as a kind of invisibility cloak. Even if a radar can detect a stealth aircraft, that doesn't mean you can shoot it down with radar-guided missiles. Even if it is possible to shoot down a stealth aircraft with radar-guided missiles, it doesn't mean that you'll be able to do it as often.

      So I think the issue of stealth comes to this question: does cost of stealth -- in dollars, complexi

  • So, 30 years from an actual deployable hardware solution.
    Got it.
  • by Anonymous Coward
  • by schematix ( 533634 ) on Friday July 13, 2018 @09:19AM (#56940694) Homepage
    the US govt developed this tech 40 years ago. the chinese stole the technology and just now figured out how to kind of make it work. they sell a home version on aliexpress for cheap, but it'll only last two uses before breaking. but you can throw it away and buy another.
  • Knowing where something is, what it is and where it's going may be a lot easier than destroying it. Someone may be able to develop methods for fooling the detection, blocking it or overwhelming it with false information.
  • In Soviet China, quantums entangle YOU!

  • This next one is, or at least a radar base on this principal. The Chinese are the ones doing this particular experiment, so they are likely ahead of the pack already.

    Here is the basis for my concept:
    Cao, Y., Li, Y.-H., Cao, Z., Yin, J., Chen, Y.-A., Yin, H.-L., Pan, J.-W. (2017).
    Direct counterfactual communication via quantum Zeno effect.
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5.
    http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.16... [doi.org]

    Basically, you set up a special inferometer where one channel *could* theoreti

  • Will raspberry jam still work?
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C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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