Abstract: Based on a comprehensive introduction of the development history, application situation, advantages and disadvantages of China's airborne cloud detection systems, this paper gives a detailed description of the system composition, detection principle, detection method and detection range of the new generation of airborne cloud detection system SPEC and discusses the recent domestic and foreign research progresses. With the increasing requirements by scientific community on the precision and accuracy of cloud detection, cloud detection systems such as particle measurement system (PMS) used in the past have been unable to meet the needs of some scientific experiments. Compared to many other cloud detection systems, SPEC has great detection advantages in terms of precision, information amount and resolution of detected particles. This is very important for more in-depth research on cloud physics. The SPEC system has been developed and applied abroad for decades, and China has introduced it recently and applied this detection system more and more to explore the macro- and microphysical cloud characteristics, which will definitely help us better understand the cloud physics.