While US stealth fighters like the F-22 Raptor grapple with delaminating radar-absorbent coatings – a vulnerability likened to “moulting cicada wings” – China claims to have found an ancient solution for its fifth-generation jets.

Recent revelations by defence industry researchers suggest that cutting-edge stealth technology aboard China’s smooth-skinned stealth fighters may owe its resilience to a 3,000-year-old textile innovation: the art of silk jacquard weaving.

Modern stealth aircraft, including the F-22 and F-35, rely on layered coatings to deflect radar signals. But these materials degrade rapidly under stress.

US maintenance logs reveal that even minor abrasions from high-speed flight or desert sandstorms can slash stealth efficacy, forcing crews to reapply radar-absorbent materials (RAM) every three weeks at costs exceeding US$60,000 per flight hour, according to some US media reports.

Plus, in regions like Florida, humidity exacerbates bonding issues, while corrosion near coastal bases further compromises performance.

Chinese aerospace engineers have long criticised such band-aid approaches. Instead, they sought a structural solution – something woven into the material’s bones.

According to a study published last month in Chinese peer-reviewed journal Knitting Industries, the answer lies in a dual-layer composite fabric inspired by Han dynasty (206BC-AD220) jacquard looms – a silk-weaving technique dating back to 200BC.

By integrating conductive yarns into a warp-knitted “double-sided jacquard” structure, researchers with China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and Tiangong University engineered a material that absorbs 90.6 per cent of radar waves in the 8-26GHz spectrum, outperforming conventional coatings.

The material is a “marriage of ancient patterning and modern electromagnetism”, according to the team led by Professor Jiang Qian.

Like traditional jacquard weavers – who used punch-card-like “flower books” to encode intricate designs – Jiang and her colleagues embedded radar-defeating geometries directly into the textile’s matrix. Quartz fibres form a dielectric base layer, while stainless steel yarns create resonant circuits that dissipate electromagnetic energy as heat.

Each conductive thread is strategically placed to guide and trap signals, just as ancient weavers arranged silk threads to depict dragons or clouds, according to the researchers.

Lab tests revealed some impressive mechanical advantages. The composite was found to withstand 93.5 megapascal of tensile stress longitudinally – more than 10 times the strength of traditional coatings. This durability stems from the knit’s anisotropic structure, where load-bearing yarns align with the aircraft’s stress vectors, mirroring the axial strength of Han-era brocades.

The Smith Chart, an electromagnetic analysis, further showed near-perfect impedance matching in the longitudinal direction, allowing radar waves to penetrate rather than reflect, according to the study.

Archaeologists trace jacquard’s origins to Shang dynasty (1600-1046BC) looms, on which artisans wove geometric patterns using manual “multi-heddle” systems. By the Han era, these had evolved into sophisticated machines with up to 120 heddle rods – a technology preserved in the world’s first jacquard weaving machine unearthed at Chengdu’s Laoguanshan Tombs.

“Those Han looms weren’t just for luxury,” said a Beijing-based science historian, who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the technology.

“They were like early binary computers, storing weaving codes in physical memory. Today’s military engineers seem to have revived that wisdom.”