China has successfully tested new “phantom space strike” technology that can trick missile defence systems by emitting fake target signals from space in a nuclear attack, it is reported.
Military engineers said computer simulations of the weapon system have achieved positive results earlier this month.
It has been designed so that three spacecraft blast out radio interference that tricks enemy forces into launching interception equipment in the wrong direction.
Researchers worked on the idea of saturating the enemy's response by sending out decoy signals.
The spacecrafts' direction, speed and formation are decided before the launch and are based on the information obtained about the enemy's radar station.
All of this allows the real weapon to fly uninterrupted to its target, significantly increasing the chance of a successful weapons deployment.
While this is relatively common closer to the ground, it has been considered extremely difficult to achieve out in space.
The team was led by Zhao Yanli, a senior engineer in the People's Liberation Army Unit 63891, a military agency based in the central Chinese province of Henan that develops new technology, reported the South China Morning Post.
While engineers ran the simulation to release just three decoy spacecraft, the researchers themselves said that more could be added fairly easily, further increasing the chances of a successful missile delivery.
The phantom force study has sparked fears however that such technology could lead to nuclear escalation from rival powers as the technology is a potent threat and could be combined with current intercontinental ballistic missiles.
While China has significantly fewer nuclear weapons than the US and Russia, its government has significantly invested in developing alternative technologies such as methods of attacking missile defence systems.
China’s latest development comes as tensions around the use of nuclear weapons is on the rise, with Russia threatening to use them if the West’s response to its invasion of Ukraine escalates.
Just a few weeks ago, scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an eminent group of researchers, said that its Doomsday Clock, an infamous device used to track how close the world is to total destruction, read 90 seconds to midnight.