The study, led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Air-to-Air Missiles, and published in the "Aero Webinar" journal on September 18, 2026, built a mathematical model for a small lidar system that can be mounted on an air-to-air missile, and then computed its ability to detect the American stealth fighter F-35C.
The remarkable result, according to the study, was that the system could potentially detect the aircraft from a distance of up to 61.5 kilometers at night, which drops to about 27.7 kilometers during the day.
The significant difference between night and day is due to sunlight; the detector that attempts to find a few reflected photons from the aircraft finds itself overwhelmed during the day by an enormous flood of background photons, while searching becomes much easier in the dark.
Single Photons
Lidar is similar to radar in principle, but with a fundamental difference: radar sends out radio waves and waits for their reflection, while lidar sends pulses of laser light and then looks for the reflected light.
In the new technology, the sensitivity is so high that the device can register extremely small numbers of photons, which are particles of light, hence the name "single-photon lidar."
However, the study does not mean that the idea of "stealth" is over; the results come from computational simulation, and there is no published evidence of testing this system on a real missile against the targeted fighter aircraft.
There is another more fundamental problem; the laser beam is extremely narrow, and therefore knowing that the system can see the aircraft from 60 kilometers does not mean that it can find it initially in a vast expanse of sky.
Thus, its true value may lie in the final stage of the engagement, after being given an approximate location of the target by other radars or sensors.
If the idea works in practice, it will not eliminate stealth, but it may add a new layer to the ongoing "cat and mouse" game between stealth capabilities and their detection methods, with aircraft being developed to mitigate the issue, while researchers continue to develop missiles to detect them, and so on indefinitely.