China's naval and air forces in the Pacific stretch from the South China Sea to Alaska and the U.S. territory of Guam, a key part of the “Second Island Chain” in Washington's strategy to contain China, while the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific host the U.S. military's most powerful space surveillance radar.
China and its competitors are engaged in electronic showdowns “every day” around the world, said the team, led by Zhou Changlin of the Strategic Support Forces College of Information Engineering. They published their findings in a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Terahertz Science and Electronics and Information Technology in May.
These events generate a large amount of signal data that contains information on time, frequency, location and electromagnetic parameters, Zhou and his colleagues wrote.
This data, collected by warships, aircraft and satellites, has grown rapidly in volume and complexity in recent years.
Traditional analysis methods were neither fast nor accurate enough to meet the Chinese military's intelligence data mining needs, the researchers said.
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Why Russia is favorably disposed towards China's presence in Central Asia
Why Russia is favorably disposed towards China's presence in Central Asia
Zhou's team has built a data processing platform based on artificial intelligence algorithms, enabling large-scale data analysis and information extraction, so as to provide precise and customized services to combat forces.
AI systems can analyze historical signals filled with noise and uncertainty to identify patterns of electronic tactical coordination between different types of radars from different countries in different locations.
The paper lists several events that the AI deemed correlated and gives their geographic coordinates.
This information will help the Chinese military better plan electronic warfare missions such as electromagnetic suppression, deception and jamming.
According to Zhou's team, the AI can identify unknown types of radar, accurately infer their sensitive operating parameters, and even predict future deployments of foreign naval fleets.
Electronic warfare AI will interface with other intelligence platforms, such as imaging satellites, to cross-check its findings.
According to Zhou's team, human experts also played a key role in fine-tuning the parameters of the AI model.
The People's Liberation Army of China's electronic warfare equipment has advanced rapidly in recent years, and its electronic warfare strategy has become more aggressive, at times putting the United States on the defensive.
Last month, Chinese and Russian warships appeared near Alaska along with strategic bombers, and another group of Chinese and Russian vessels were reported to have approached Guam, home to the largest U.S. military base in the Western Pacific.
The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Rafael Peralta said on its official Facebook page that the ship “defended Guam” during the Chinese and Russian deployments.
But the US Navy later removed the statement and said interactions with the Chinese and Russian warships had been “safe and professional,” Newsweek magazine reported on Monday.
