In our previous two articles, we looked at the evolution of drones and the different types of drones that Taiwan is developing in-house or buying from the U.S. In this article, we’re focusing on the drones that China has been developing and fielding over the last few years.
As mentioned in the first of these three articles, Chinese drones managed to fly around Taiwan on April 27, and then again on May 2. The April 27 flight marked the first time that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense admitted that a Chinese drone had flown around Taiwan. The resulting news reporting on this event highlighted a problem that often pops up when one researches China’s drones.
CNN and others accurately reported that Taiwan’s defense ministry said that the April 27 flight had been performed by a BT-001 combat drone. However, most of these outlets then used photos of a three-engine propeller drone packed with 10 missiles and bombs under its long wings, plus another two missiles under its fuselage. The articles correctly described the BT-001 as a two-engine propeller drone, but the photos of the three-engine drone they used with the story were that of a variant — and the photos also showed an unrealistically large number of hardpoints and weapons under its wings.
Janes is one of the few media outlets that have any info on the three-engine variant, reporting that the designation of the new variant has not been revealed. Normally, a three-engine version of a two-engine plane would warrant an official difference in designation — like naming it the TB-002, or adding an “A” after the TB-001, at the very least — but the lack of this distinction creates a lot of confusion over what the TB-001 actually is. Whether the confusion was intentional or not, it did trick outlets like CNN to show photos of a much more powerful variant next to the story of the TB-001 that circled Taiwan.
In its analysis of the TB-001, Janes added that “Global Times quoted the Chengdu Daily newspaper as saying that the platform has a flight ceiling of 9,500 meters,” a top speed of over 300 kilometers per hour, a maximum take-off weight of 3.2 tons, and can fly for up to 35 hours.
Both Chinese news outlets quoted above are outlets of government propaganda and misinformation, and as most technical information on Chinese drones are revealed via such propaganda outlets, one has to take their claims of drone performance data with a pinch of salt.
So, the reality is that there are a lot of drone-development projects going on in China right now, and it is very hard to find verifiable performance data on these drones. Some of these drones appear as impressive-looking mockups at Chinese trade shows one year, only to have disappeared from memory by the next year — which is why such products are called “vaporware.” For this reason we’ll focus on the more established Chinese drones, while also looking at the more realistic and mature concepts that seem to be in actual development as opposed to being potential “vaporware.”
China’s ‘SR-71 Blackbird’ drone
One of the most interesting drones China is already fielding is a 11.5-meter-long supersonic recon drone that looks like a sleek black arrowhead with two rocket thrusters sticking out at its rear — the WZ-8. The U.S.’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency states the WZ-8 is a rocket-propelled UAV that can reach speeds of Mach 3 and altitudes of 100,000 feet (30 kilometers). The biggest drawback of this winged rocket is that it requires a bomber like the H6-M to carry it to a suitable altitude and speed before the WZ-8 detaches from the bomber and its rockets ignite. Like the U.S.s’ 1960s-era SR-71 Blackbird recon jet and D-21 recon drone, the WZ-8 would then fly high and fast over enemy air defenses to gather data via its synthetic aperture radar and electro optical sensors in a limited time window. After the mission ended, the WZ-8 and bomber would land at the same airfield, where the bomber would pick up the drone and return it to its home base — which the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has identified as Liuan Airfield in Anhui Province.
Mysterious stealth drones that don’t fly
The GJ-11 Sharp Sword “stealth drone” is another Chinese project that might turn out to be a very elaborate misinformation campaign — meaning that it could be something like a long-term vaporware project. Like the B-2 Spirit bomber and its brand new replacement, the B-21 Raider, the GJ-11 is a flying wing designed for stealth. It looks almost identical in size and shape to the CIA’s secretive RQ-170 Sentinel stealth spy drone that was brought down by Iran in 2011. However, where the RQ-170 was designed from the ground up to be a platform for spy equipment, the GJ-11 is touted as an attack drone. A probable mockup of the drone first appeared in October 2019.
A scale model of the same drone reappeared at the 2021 version of Airshow China, this time the mockup featured open weapons-bay doors that revealed two weapons bays containing scale models of eight precision-guided munitions. At China’s display of military technologies for its National Day celebrations on October 1, 2022, the GJ-11 was displayed as a realistic-looking full-scale model, but this time the display seemed to lack the weapons bays required to carry weapons internally. A few days later, Chinese media released computer-generated images of multiple GJ-11 drones flying with a rare two-seat version of China’s J-20 stealth fighter. The images suggest that the GJ-11 is being developed to act as an “AI wingman drone” that would fly with the J-20, and that the second seat of the two-seat J-20 could be filled by a co-pilot that would manage the mission profiles of the wingman drones.
Only time will tell if the GJ-11 is an elaborate vaporware hoax designed to keep the Pentagon guessing, or whether it will become a useful drone. Some analysts believe the fact that the latest display model couldn’t be verified as a real vehicle, and the fact that it had no discernable weapons-bays doors means that it is currently at most a non-combat drone and at worst a vaporware drone that only exists as a mockup and computer-generated images. A functional but less stealthy prototype of the GJ-11 was photographed on an airfield in May 2013, and another undated photo seemed to show the prototype flying. A Chinese-language video posted in June 2013 showed the prototype (featuring a non-stealthy jet engine) rolling down a runway at low speeds, but not taking off.
In 2017 it was reported that the prototype had won a prestigious Chinese technology award, and that a mature and more stealthy version would be ready for production by 2020. However, we now see that the more stealthy and mature GJ-11 was still not ready to fly the last time we were given a glimpse of it in October 2022.
Another Chinese stealth jet drone that might be more real than the GJ-11 is the CH-7 Star Shadow, which looks very similar to the U.S.’s X-47B carrier-based combat drone. The CH-7 first appeared in model form at the Singapore Airshow in 2018. Just a few days after the GJ-11 was displayed at China’s National Day celebrations on October 1, 2022, a video appeared that seemed to show a drone very similar to the CH-7 flying somewhere in China. Once again, there can be no certainty regarding the existence of such a stealth drone, as the video is too blurry to be sure it is an actual drone and not a small model plane or a manned plane.
It is clear that China has been making real progress in developing prototypes of at least two stealth drones, but it seems impossible to find verifiable information about the completed versions of such drones — let alone data on their dependability and performance efficiency.
China’s version of the ‘Global Hawk’
The WZ-7 is one example of a mature Chinese surveillance drone. The fuselage of this large jet-powered drone looks similar to Northrop Grumman’s RQ-4 Global Hawk, and it has the same role as a high-altitude surveillance platform that is controlled remotely via satellite. At 131 feet, the Global Hawk’s wing is a lot longer than the 75-foot wing of the WZ-7, which helps the former to fly for a longer period of time. However, China only needs to patrol its own region, whereas the U.S. uses the Global Hawk to gather data across the globe. The WZ-7’s tail also features a unique forward-sweeping horizontal stabilizer that connects to the top of its swept-back main wing via vertical panels, resulting in a complex “diamond-shaped biplane wing.” China says the unique blended wing offers more stability in rough weather conditions like typhoons.
Many active ‘Predator’ clones
While China’s stealth drone projects are still a mystery to non-Chinese analysts, its many propeller drones are a lot easier to track. Chinese corporations have managed to develop a large range of proven propeller drones that look very similar to the U.S.’s MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. These include China’s best-selling CH-4 and also its CH-6 and Wing Loong 2 and Wing Loong 3 drones, which China claims to be not just much cheaper but also faster and capable of carrying more weapons than the American UAVs that they are outwardly very similar to.
Last but not least, one of the most mature military aerial drones in the Chinese arsenal is the two-engine version of the TB-001, which we discussed at the beginning of this article. It differs from the U.S.’s Predator and Reaper in that it has two propeller engines at the front, compared to the one propeller at the rear of the U.S. models. It also differs from the U.S. models in that its tail is cut off, and the front of the drone is connected to its wide horizontal tail section via two booms growing out of its wings. This design is similar to the U.S.’s aging RQ-2A Pioneer drone and Taiwan’s Albatros I and II drones, but the big difference is that the TB-001 is a lot larger and its twin booms are so sturdy they could be called fuselages themselves, as they house the two “pull” propeller engines at the front of the wing. The TB-001 has a wingspan of 20 meters and a maximum take-off weight of 2.8 tons, compared to the 3.2 tons of its three-engine variant. Like China’s Predator-like drones, the TB-001 can be fitted with multiple guided munitions as well as surveillance packages and technology that can identify targets and guide precision-guided weapons like cruise missiles.
Image: China Military Photos
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