China’s military has successfully tested a terrifying new “phantom space strike” weapon that can trick missile defence systems from space.

Military engineers said earlier this month that computer simulations for the tricksy weapon system were successful and achieved positive results by overcoming major hurdles in dummy deployment.

Engineers designed the weapon to breach the atmosphere before releasing three spacecraft that blast out radio interference that tricks enemy forces into launching interception equipment in the wrong direction.

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Researchers exploited a weak spot in radar stations where signals can become fuzzy and crossed over.

The spacecrafts' direction, speed and formation would be decided before the launch and would be based on the information obtained about the enemy's radar station.

All of this allows the real weapon to fly uninterrupted to its target, significantly increasing the chance of a successful weapons deployment.

While this is relatively common closer to the ground, it was thought to be nearly impossible out in space.

The team was led by Zhao Yanli, a senior engineer in the People's Liberation Army Unit 63891, which is a military agency based in the central Chinese province of Henan that develops new technology.

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While engineers ran the simulation to release just three decoy spacecraft, the researchers themselves said that more could be added fairly easily, further increasing the chances of a successful missile delivery.

The phantom force study has sparked fears however that such technology could trigger an aggressive nuclear response, as the technology could be combined with current ICBMs, which can carry nuclear payloads across continents.

While China has significantly less nuclear weapons than the US and Russia, its government has significantly invested into developing alternative technologies such as methods of attacking missile defence systems.

China’s latest development comes as tensions around the use of nuclear weapons is on the rise, with Russia threatening to use them if the West’s response to its invasion of Ukraine escalates.

Just a few weeks ago, scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an eminent group of researchers, said that its Doomsday Clock, an infamous device used to track how close the world is to total destruction, read 90 seconds to midnight.

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