Chinese defence researchers have unveiled a groundbreaking data link system that could decisively outpace Nato’s current military communications, tipping the balance of military power with high-speed warfare.
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Engineered for the extreme demands of large-scale hypersonic combat – where aircraft scream through the skies at Mach 5 and missiles hurtle forward at Mach 11 – the new network achieves time synchronisation accuracy within five nanoseconds, dwarfing the performance of Nato’s flagship Link 16 system by two orders of magnitude.
This leap, developed by the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), enables real-time, secure coordination between hypersonic platforms, ground command centres, radar networks, naval fleets and satellite intelligence – despite the immense technical challenges posed by blistering speeds and rapidly shifting geometries.
Experts said this innovation could mark a strategic shift: from isolated hypersonic breakthroughs to a fully networked, cooperative strike ecosystem. Without equivalent capabilities, Western militaries could be left “time blind”, unable to react to coordinated hypersonic swarms operating with surgical precision.
As China prepares to unveil its most advanced systems in a coming military parade, the implications for global defence dynamics are both profound and urgent, the experts said.
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The new data link addresses a critical challenge in hypersonic warfare: at relative speeds that could exceed 4km (2.4 miles) per second, even extremely small timing errors could translate to kilometre-level targeting miscalculations.