Here is Henri K take on the same subject . I am not sure what to make of this device. Is this anti missile device or or device to disrupt radar to neutralize opponent anti air network?
The
Prize of science and the state of technology , divided into five categories, are awarded annually to researchers and Chinese organizations that have made outstanding scientific and technological achievements for China. Some of these award-winning projects, often of a sensitive or military nature, are not disclosed to the public, but there are still indications of their "outline", such as a large-scale microwave project ( High-Power Microwave, HPM).
Our story begins with
which mentions nine "specific" projects won first prize, and one for the top prize in the category of
National Award of science and technology for Year.
And as tradition has been for decades, no detail - not even the names of projects or people - has been given on these projects kept secret, at least not "easily".
Indeed, an article quietly published Jan. 17 on the government website Yifeng County (宜丰县) revealed the name of a researcher, Huang Wen Hua (黄文华), one of the first prizes at the
National Progress Award science and technology was awarded to him , and this name is not in
.
Chinese researcher HUANG Wen Hua
The project of HUANG is thus part of one of the 9 "specific", and one can learn some details in the text, through the video conference made with the Chinese researcher.
"The rewarded project is the result of 18 years of research. "HUANG said during the interview," He (the prototype) participated in the 2010 Huaihai military exercise, and we took another 6 years to improve and implement it, before receiving the award. "
This researcher from the Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology says the project will allow China to increase its capacity in the electronic warfare of the future.
"
It does not yet exist the same abroad ", he adds.
Although the article does not give any other details, but we now have a name and an organization, and we know that the project is a weapon, or assimilated, in electronic warfare.
Continuing research on this researcher and his organization, we learn in
, this time from a local newspaper in Jiangxi Province, Huang that is actually the deputy director of the Institute in question .
He and his team have been working on energy-led technologies since 1992. The text says that the project successfully completed its tests "outdoors" (probably from the lab) in 2010, which is consistent with the information revealed in the First article, and that the results of this research show great potential in the field of national defense, economy and industrial production.
A more focused research on HUANG and his work shows that this researcher actually works in directed energy, but in a specific field - high power microwave beams (HPM). In
, the team from the Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology studied the mechanism of "burnout" of semiconductor by HPM.
The HPM is a strong electromagnetic pulse of a frequency varied between 1 GHz and 300 GHz, with a watt-peak greater than 100MW. Its pulses are very short, tens of nanoseconds.
Because of these characteristics, HPM can be used in several military areas. During the Gulf War, for example, Tomahawk cruising missiles, equipped with experimental HPM heads, neutralized part of the Iraqi anti-aircraft warfare network using the virtual cathode oscillator.
Non-lethal microwave weapons, or the electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which we all know, have also been developed by exploiting the properties of HPM.
One of the questions to be answered now is what precisely is this microwave weapon, which concerns electronic warfare and which seems to be the first of its kind, that the Chinese researcher developed and put into practice.
Knowing that the Chinese have already developed non-lethal weapons based on the HPM as the
WB-1 proposed for export, and anyway this type of weaponry is not kind of electronic warfare, we can already rule This possibility.
Unfortunately very few elements allow us to move forward in this quest for the moment. An index was eventually found in another academic document co-written by the same researcher. This document still on the subject of HPM, which was published in October 2009 - a year before the first tests in a military exercise of the weapon - speaks of
using a cylindrical cavity resonator ,
Reading the text tells us that the team has successfully tested this new system which allows to multiply the impulse capacity by 10.
"Bofors HPM Blackout" from BAE Systems
According to the Chinese researchers, the goal of building such a pulse compression system is to reach the level of Giga-watt, against a hundred Megawatt today, for a device operating in S band.
This whole system reminds us of the "
Bofors HPM Blackout " BAE Systems, a high-power microwave device to evaluate and study the damage caused by microwave beams and the associated protection.
However, it is believed that the Chinese project would probably be something other than a "simple" Giga-watt class device, because in the two articles at the beginning, researcher HUANG Something that does not exist elsewhere.
Rumors speak of a new type of "mobile radar" industrialized with HPM technology, with a watt-peak of 1.2 GW, a pulse width of 5 to 25 ns, and a total mass of 5,000 kg. But we have not yet succeeded in locating the source of origin. Another source that wanted to remain anonymous also indicated that the weapon in question was not "offensive", and would have a link with the missile defense halfway.
If we combine the last two elements, this suggests that a device capable of distinguishing the true warheads from certain lures would have been designed and tested on 18 November 2010. Unfortunately we can no longer consult messages to airmen (NOTAMs) dating from The year 2010 to know what happened on that day precisely.
So what is the true nature of this Chinese microwave weapon that earned a valuable first national award? Feel free to share with us if you have any ideas. But in the meantime, I will continue to dig deeper, this is a whole new area that I have not had the opportunity to study yet ...
To be continued.
Henri K.
