Chinese MALE, HALE (and rotary, small, suicide) UAV/UCAV thread

[Blitzo]

Small UAVs and high-end uavs shouldn't be in the same thread; it's a self-inflicted problem

Considering there is a different dedicated thread for high end UCAVs and CCAs, we would have to add a whole other thread if HALE and MALE drones were also separated out.

More importantly, the discussion being has no bearing on how the topics are organized.
This discussion isn't occurring because of the thread that small drones and quadcopters are in, but because of how people view the relevance of small drones and quadcopters to the important contingencies the PLA are likely to face.

More seriously, in general smaller munitions are more relevant for land fights. Land fights are high-end fights, and they're an integral part of Chinese contingencies.

In my last few posts I have specified high end air-naval-missile conflicts as ones where small drones and quadcopters are of reduced significance or at minimum require substantial higher end capabilities to even be considered fieldable.

For land contingencies, first those are very much secondary for the PLA and a fairly distant second, second I agree small drones and quadcopters have an easier threshold to achieve relevance in that setting but it is still higher end capabilities that have the greatest yield effects to enable your forces to make use of small drones.


The reason I posted the original article, and my consistent position the last few posts, has been to pour some cold water on a discourse I've seen about China's ability to produce so much of the world's smallest drones and quadcopters, because for the most important contingencies the PLA is focused on, small drones and quadcopters will not be the decisive capabilities that will win the war or even kick down the door.

Yes, China building much of the world's smallest drones and quadcopters is good for them and they can be more useful in certain contingencies (particularly land oriented), but people need to have a clear vision as to how limited they are in high end air-naval-missile warfare as well.

 

[plawolf]

Small drones have a role in warfare, that is not something I'm disputing.

What I am saying, is that small drones have a relatively limited role in high end warfare, and their effectiveness will be determined by the outcome of battles fought by higher end capabilities, so boasting about China's manufacturing of small drones does not have much consequence. At the minimum, they need to be weighted accurately to what they are actually able to achieve.

In general, yes, but not so overwhelmingly in this case since China has the home field advantage since it is where the fight will be, and American forces will need to come to China’s home turf to contest its reunification with Taiwan or there isn’t even a fight.

When opfor needs to come to you, at least half of your range problem is solved for you by the enemy’s need to come to you.

Small drones actually offers a very interesting new naval mine warfare dimension, where zones of drone swarm mines could be placed in likely enemy ingress zones.

It doesn’t need to be fancy, just a passive sonar, power bank with as many loitering munitions tube launchers as could be squeezed into a suitable standard, mass produced floating buoy. Maybe a few comms units per xx drone buoys/mines all networked together.

The mines could deploy individual drones to investigate likely contacts that come within range. Once PID of enemy target is confirmed, the mines can launch suicide drones en mass to target core soft targets like radars, comms, CIWS and VLS while contact is communicated to HQ to que up follow up attacks by heavy conventional munitions. Which will likely come in against heavily damaged if not outright mission killed enemy warships.

That’s just a very basic use case that can be built with Houthi level tech using off-the-shelf components that would be fairly cheap to make and deploy on an industrial scale.

The same concept could be easily adapted to drone ships, like what Ukraine have used to great effect against the Russians. Only these will be far harder to counter since the drone ships don’t need to ram their targets and can instead deploy a swarm of loitering munitions from dozens of KMs away.

 

[Blitzo]

In general, yes, but not so overwhelmingly in this case since China has the home field advantage since it is where the fight will be, and American forces will need to come to China’s home turf to contest its reunification with Taiwan or there isn’t even a fight.

When opfor needs to come to you, at least half of your range problem is solved for you by the enemy’s need to come to you.

Small drones actually offers a very interesting new naval mine warfare dimension, where zones of drone swarm mines could be placed in likely enemy ingress zones.

It doesn’t need to be fancy, just a passive sonar, power bank with as many loitering munitions tube launchers as could be squeezed into a suitable standard, mass produced floating buoy. Maybe a few comms units per xx drone buoys/mines all networked together.

The mines could deploy individual drones to investigate likely contacts that come within range. Once PID of enemy target is confirmed, the mines can launch suicide drones en mass to target core soft targets like radars, comms, CIWS and VLS while contact is communicated to HQ to que up follow up attacks by heavy conventional munitions. Which will likely come in against heavily damaged if not outright mission killed enemy warships.

That’s just a very basic use case that can be built with Houthi level tech using off-the-shelf components that would be fairly cheap to make and deploy on an industrial scale.

The same concept could be easily adapted to drone ships, like what Ukraine have used to great effect against the Russians. Only these will be far harder to counter since the drone ships don’t need to ram their targets and can instead deploy a swarm of loitering munitions from dozens of KMs away.

If the US was going to base extensive surface forces within the first island chain, I would agree with you small suicide drones might have a supplementary role. (US aircraft conducting sorties in the first island chain will be operating from bases and carriers outside of the first island chain

In reality, the US will aim to space their forces at greater distances between the first and second island chains in earlier phases of the conflict, with various bases and CSGs aimed to be heavily fortified and escorted. Those will be the targets the PLA need to comprehensively degrade and destroy.

For that mission, for those distances, you will not be using small suicide drones like Harpy/Shahed etc, let alone quadcopters.


Putting it another way, if a Westpac high intensity conflict occurs and the PLA are able to viably use small suicide drones and quadcopters against US naval and surface targets, then chances are it means either the PLA are losing the war and quite badly (because they're not able to keep US forces away from the first island chain and PRC mainland), or the PLA are winning the war (because the PLA are able to occupy and legitimately fight on the ground in Westpac islands that the US occupies, which in turn means the PLA has ripped the heart out of US air, naval and missile forces in the region to begin with).

Either way, the decisive capabilities in a high end Westpac air-naval-missile conflict are not going to be small suicide drones or quadcopters.


(For a Taiwan conflict specifically, i.e. one where it is just the PLA versus ROC military without outside intervention, I agree small drones and quadcopters can be relevant -- however a conflict between only the PLA and ROC military is already such a mismatch, that adding in the strength of PRC small drones is just superfluous for the purposes of discussion)

 

[plawolf]

If the US was going to base extensive surface forces within the first island chain, I would agree with you small suicide drones might have a supplementary role. (US aircraft conducting sorties in the first island chain will be operating from bases and carriers outside of the first island chain

In reality, the US will aim to space their forces at greater distances between the first and second island chains in earlier phases of the conflict, with various bases and CSGs aimed to be heavily fortified and escorted. Those will be the targets the PLA need to comprehensively degrade and destroy.

For that mission, for those distances, you will not be using small suicide drones like Harpy/Shahed etc, let alone quadcopters.


Putting it another way, if a Westpac high intensity conflict occurs and the PLA are able to viably use small suicide drones and quadcopters against US naval and surface targets, then chances are it means either the PLA are losing the war and quite badly (because they're not able to keep US forces away from the first island chain and PRC mainland), or the PLA are winning the war (because the PLA are able to occupy and legitimately fight on the ground in Westpac islands that the US occupies, which in turn means the PLA has ripped the heart out of US air, naval and missile forces in the region to begin with).

Either way, the decisive capabilities in a high end Westpac air-naval-missile conflict are not going to be small suicide drones or quadcopters.


(For a Taiwan conflict specifically, i.e. one where it is just the PLA versus ROC military without outside intervention, I agree small drones and quadcopters can be relevant -- however a conflict between only the PLA and ROC military is already such a mismatch, that adding in the strength of PRC small drones is just superfluous for the purposes of discussion)

Well, I think you are projecting too much western and American ‘only the best will do’ mentality on the PLA.

Just because they have something leagues better doesn’t mean they immediately trash all their second bad third tier inventory. The PLAAF still operating J7s for goodness sake.

Thus while I agree with your general point that the key decisive battles will be won by top tier weapons and platforms. I think you will be surprised at how practical and humble the PLA will also be in not looking down on lower tier gear that nonetheless brings value to their battleplan.

An obvious example is that I would not easily rule out the PLAAF making a 3000km ranged Harpy/Shahed to spam at Guam. Even if those drones only waste American defensive missiles and does zero damage (ranging from unlikely to near impossible depending on the numbers used), it’s still a great trade for the PLA. So one should not read too much into the PLA using such low-end weapons as signs of stress or overconfidence.

A fight between China and America will be a kitchen-sink throwing fight for both sides, probably more so for China given the stakes. So it will seek to fully utilise every conceivable edge it has and won’t care about how it might look so long as it brings results.

 

[Blitzo]

Well, I think you are projecting too much western and American ‘only the best will do’ mentality on the PLA.

Just because they have something leagues better doesn’t mean they immediately trash all their second bad third tier inventory. The PLAAF still operating J7s for goodness sake.

Thus while I agree with your general point that the key decisive battles will be won by top tier weapons and platforms. I think you will be surprised at how practical and humble the PLA will also be in not looking down on lower tier gear that nonetheless brings value to their battleplan.

An obvious example is that I would not easily rule out the PLAAF making a 3000km ranged Harpy/Shahed to spam at Guam. Even if those drones only waste American defensive missiles and does zero damage (ranging from unlikely to near impossible depending on the numbers used), it’s still a great trade for the PLA. So one should not read too much into the PLA using such low-end weapons as signs of stress or overconfidence.

A fight between China and America will be a kitchen-sink throwing fight for both sides, probably more so for China given the stakes. So it will seek to fully utilise every conceivable edge it has and won’t care about how it might look so long as it brings results.

I'm okay with the idea of the PRC using its small drone building capacity to try to array every single asset it has in its favour -- doing so very much means recognizing that small drones (even ultra long range Harpy/Shaheds) will be relatively incapable fires in context of other platforms, but might be able to be, as you say, adding some kitchen sinks to the fight.

My point is to demonstrate that the PRC's significant small drone and quadcopter building capacity is not a particularly meaningful "strength" for a high end westpac air-naval-missile conflict, and to instead recognize that there are a whole variety of other capabilities and platforms where true.
There are some people (not you) who have spoken of these small drones and quadcopters in context of a high end westpac fight making it sound like it is a significantly relevant capability and advantage that the PLA has which can help to greatly correlate victory to their favour. If they spoke about these small drones and quadcopters as recognizing they're not relevant for the high end westpac fight, and that sure they can be used in a way to humbly help add some low end long range fires to augment the rest of the more important higher end capabilities (fighters, bombers, high end UCAVs, long range missiles), then I wouldn't have a problem with it.


To be honest, when I made the post a few pages back on #938, I expected most people wouldn't particularly respond to it because it should've been obvious that low end drones and quadcopters have no heavy weighting for a high end westpac fight, but I think some other users might feel particularly strongly about this supposed "PRC advantage" that they want to come up with unlikely situations for a high end westpac conflict where they can be viable.


For what its worth, I do believe and agree that the ability to produce large numbers of "drones" will be essential to a high end westpac conflict -- but it won't be quad copters or small suicide drones or loitering munitions.
Instead, it will be mass producing stealthy A2G and ISR UCAVs like GJ-11 or a PLA equivalent to RQ-180, as well as CCAs of varying sizes and complexity ranging from large target drones to near fighter sized UCAVs, of varying levels of LO to VLO.

 

[Taiban]

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[vincent]

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[Index]

Lower end drones do play a huge role. Especially cheap tomahawk/shahed style cruise missiles, and cluster dropped drones.

But no one has said it's their role to contest airspace/air defenses. China will be relying on its overmatch in high end drones and especially high end missiles for that.

Hypersonic weapons, high end missiles and stealth fighters to kick down the door, lower end munitions are however crucial to keep up the pressure after the door is kicked down.

Being able to transfer China's industrial capability directly and cheaply to bombs on target is vital for the war effort, it is this role where low end drones fit in (not quadrocopter, quadrocopter is more a terror weapon to help ground forces clear out areas).

Send 10 000 cheap cruise missiles at say Kyushu = ok but essentially gambling that air defenses get depleted. Send in a wave of 300 first, have EW and ISR assets sniff out responding air defense, deploy SEAD using air and hypersonic weapons, then send in the other 9700 cheap missiles once several Patriot batteries have been destroyed and the rest are running = resounding success near guaranteed.

The low end missiles here are also an absolute key. Without those, there is no volume of fire, only precision strikes. Which as proven in many earlier conflicts, is often not enough.

 

[ohan_qwe]

How effective would reacon with fire be with shahed 136 sized drones in a naval setting? Like fan out a thousand drones 1km between each towards US.

Shooting them down would give away your position but letting them fly over isn't a option either. If they cost $10k a thousand would only cost $10M.

 

[LuzinskiJ]

US aircraft conducting sorties in the first island chain will be operating from bases and carriers outside of the first island chain

So does this imply bases in Okinawa (include Sasebo naval base?) and the Phillipines won't be used in an armed conflict against China?