China is rapidly advancing an “AI Plus” revolution in electronic warfare to redefine how militaries communicate, jam and dominate the electromagnetic spectrum, according to industrial experts.
In a paper published last month, they argued that by fusing artificial intelligence (AI) with the very physics of radio wave propagation, China could win a “new form of war” where communications and radars are faster, smarter and far more resilient than anything fielded today.
Their findings were published in the Chinese journal Command Control and Simulation on April 29.
The team is led by senior engineer Li Fukai with the China Academy of Electronics and Information Technology and the National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation, top-tier defence research and development institutes directly involved in national strategic programmes.
For decades, electronic warfare has been about jamming, spoofing and intercepting signals. But in an era where drones swarm and hypersonic missiles dictate the action, traditional methods are struggling to cope with the chaos of dynamic, unpredictable signal environments.
The Pentagon has reportedly deployed AI during strikes against Iranian targets. However, even advanced systems such as the F-35 stealth fighter have suffered losses, as Iranian air defences managed to exploit weaknesses in US electronic warfare systems.
This raises a sobering question: if current US technology struggles against a mid-tier adversary such as Iran, how would it fare against China’s AI-enhanced electronic warfare capabilities?
China’s new AI-driven pulse-interleaved waveforms are designed to confuse enemy jammers, according to Li and his colleagues.
In experiments at the National University of Defence Technology, such systems reduced error rates from 1 in 100 to just 1 in 10,000 under strong jamming, while boosting throughput by nearly 300 per cent.
In ultra-long-distance communication, AI could help the People’s Liberation Army establish a wireless link over 5,000km (over 3,100 miles) without satellite relay.
By analysing real-time data from ground and space sensors, AI can predict optimal frequencies for long-range transmissions hours in advance, giving Chinese forces a reliable communication edge during solar storms or electronic attacks, according to Li and his colleagues.
China is also making significant progress in cross-medium propagation prediction, where AI fuses simulation data, real-time measurements and environmental sensing to model how signals move across air, land, sea and even urban canyons, according to the paper.
Using deep reinforcement or DRL, Chinese “intelligent beam-forming” systems can now dynamically adjust antenna signals in microseconds, steering energy precisely towards friendly receivers while avoiding interference or enemy detection.
In field tests, this approach boosted 5G edge-user throughput by over 25 per cent and reduced signal overlap – critical for both civilian networks and battlefield communications.
For the military, this means drones, ships and aircraft can maintain secure links even in heavily contested electromagnetic zones, according to Li’s team.
Using a technique called adaptive interface-Pinns (physics-informed neural networks), researchers can now simulate radio behaviour at the boundary between air and seawater with unprecedented accuracy. This could enable seamless communication between drones and submarines.
“These application scenario case studies demonstrate that AI-empowered radio wave propagation has achieved remarkable results in various aspects of the network information system,” they wrote.
Li’s team envisions a future “self-evolving” network where AI continuously learns from the environment, adapts communication strategies and autonomously reconfigures the entire posture of an electromagnetic war machine.
But the United States has not been idle.
“The US military has equipped platforms such as early-warning aircraft, aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates with dedicated real-time radio wave environment monitoring devices,” the researchers wrote.
These systems “routinely collect ionospheric data over key maritime regions, providing decision-making support and performance enhancement for military network information systems in navigation, spectrum management and communications”.
The study added that China was taking serious note of “integrated space-ground, civil-military collaborative architecture”. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
