According to a story on the Techno-Science website, a recent Chinese study shows that Starlink satellites could provide a means for detecting stealth aircraft. Stealth technology is devoted to developing aircraft shapes and surfaces that reduce the radar signature and deflect radar beams. But Chinese researchers have reportedly found that aircraft – including stealth aircraft – cause interference in regular satellite signals, such as those from the Starlink constellation, that can be analyzed to detect their presence, even when they are invisible to radar.
I’m curious to know more details, but I suspect this is not as worrisome as it sounds. Being able to detect a stealth aircraft is not the same as (and far easier than) being able to track and target it.
As I understand it, military radar can already ‘detect’ stealth aircraft. After all, they are called “low-observables” and are not truly invisible to radar. But by ‘detect’ I mean ‘something is out there, sorta in this direction and about that far away,’ but are unable to do so with enough accuracy to engage it.
Stealth aircraft can already be detected by the sounds they emit and the shadows they cast. But, so far as I know, neither provide enough information to actually target them.
I can’t claim to know the first thing about it. But, I can concur that this is exactly my understanding as well. And you did a great job of explaining it.
That is a tiny drone. When you think of all the aircraft up there, the filters in place to make sure it is a stealth fighter/bomber and not little Jimmy’s toy will be very complicated to work out…
Actually, it would work very well. It is like creating a hologram of the airplane. A series of receivers could receive the direct signal of the satellite and also the scattered signal reflected from the plane (stealthy or not). The phase difference of those signals allows calculation of the location of an object relative to the receiver, especially as the location of the transmitter is known. Stealth aircraft reflect RADAR such that most of the signal doesn’t return to the transmitter, but is scattered away. A properly sited receiver can receive those scattered signals. With receivers connected by computers and using exact timing to sample the received signals, it works like very long baseline interferometry. As planes move, the phase difference changes for a particular receiver- combined with information from other receivers, they can track the aircraft. Regular planes can be recognized from their transponders and normal RADAR returns while stealth aircraft can be found by the lack of normal RADAR signals. There’s lots of satellite transmitters up there- GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Starlink, and many others.