RUSSIA and China are developing drones to detect and track Britain’s new £100m “stealth” combat jets.
The F-35B Lightning II has been billed as the world’s most advanced stealth fighter aircraft, with the ability to evade enemy air defences.
The UK has placed an initial £2.1bn order for 14 and plans to buy at least a further 34. But Russia and China are in a race to develop technology to neutralise the F-35’s stealth capability, potentially making the aircraft an expensive white elephant.
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Last week Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET), a Russian electronic systems manufacturer, used an air show in Moscow to unveil the design of a futuristic new drone. The unmanned aircraft, which has not yet been named, will use low-frequency radar to detect stealth combat aircraft such as the F-35 and the F-22 Raptor, an American fighter.
Vladimir Mikheev, KRET’s deputy chief executive, claimed the drone would also have its own “electromagnetic sphere” to cloak it from radar, allowing it to pinpoint aircraft without itself being detected.
The F-35 is designed to have the lowest possible radar signature through the use of flat surfaces, sharp edges and special paint to deflect radar signals.
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Experts say this can make it invisible to the high frequency radars used in modern air-defence systems. However, it remains vulnerable to being spotted by low frequency radar, such as VHF, an older technology used in the Second World War.
Photographs emerged earlier this year of Divine Eagle, a Chinese high-altitude drone, which analysts think has been designed to detect and intercept stealth aircraft and warships as they approach the Chinese mainland. The aircraft, which reportedly flew in February, has seven radar systems.
Justin Bronk, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, said the stealth technology on F-35s “is not infallible” and its capabilities when it entered service in 2018 would not be “what the original sales pitch was . . . back in the mid-1990s”.
The Ministry of Defence said it was “confident the F-35B will be able to survive and operate in a contested air defence environment well after it enters service”.