Chinese UAV/UCAV development

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supercat

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It turns out that Russian forces also use DJI drones and DJI technologies. Here is a crazy story: DJI's Aeroscope technology is not available to Ukrainian drone operators, but it is available to Russian drone operators. As a result, Russian forces can locate and take out Ukraine drone operators, while Ukrainian forces cannot do the same thing to Russian drone operators.
The Russians are using… this technology to track the positions of drone operators in order to target their artillery/rocket fire. In other words, the Russians are using DJI technology to kill Ukrainian drone operators. According to the latest reports from the Ukrainian army, Aeroscope technology is effectively disabled for Ukrainian operators. That is, as long as the Russians have the technical ability to track Ukrainian DJI drone operators, the Ukrainian army cannot do the same. This, in turn, means that the largest Chinese drone company is secretly supporting the activities of the Russian army in Ukraine, giving the Russians access to all its technological capabilities and remotely disabling them for the Ukrainians
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DJI drones are popular among the Ukrainian military. Recently, Finnish volunteers donated 140 DJI Mavic Mini drones to our army.
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DJI Aeroscope technology:
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Michaelsinodef

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Apparantly it's a 3rd generation ucav (3代无人机).

And while the head and uh the back around the propeller COULD be similar/sameish as the 2 pics below due to angle, the tail is definitely different.

If anything probably new generation/small improvements over the older ones (also there's pylons/missiles under the wings?)?
 

Philister

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Ukrainian forces got DJI drones. Maybe it's time for Russia to consider to get Chinese UCAVs.
Dude, they act like internet tech reviewers, always so happy about just everything they got that they have to show it to the whole world , I wouldn’t be surprised if the manufacturers actually paid them to promote their products.
Last time the brits send them those orange drones which are also come from a Chinese company, this time ,DJI, both are civilian drones that everybody can get in a decent price
 

tphuang

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I've been listening to various USAF talk recently about how they plan to defeat China in a West Pacific scenario. Specifically to deal with China's missile threats and air defense system. Most of them is kind of similar like this
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That one does seem to be a joke to me. In reality, their plan is more like having each F-22/35 control several XQ-58A loyal wingman. The concept is sending stealthy, attritable and cheap UCAVs in more dangerous areas to weaken defences for the manned aircraft. So far, the idea is having these systems to overwhelm air defense with a lot of EW pressure and saturate the air defence system. This would allow air defense to be defeated with less risk for the higher valued manned aircraft.

I think it's important to talk about how China could launch similar attacks and to break up these type of attacks.

For the former, we have seen GJ-11, CH-7 and FH-97 thus far. The CASC UCAVs are likely just for the export market, so I don't think CH-7/FH-97 will join service with PLA. It's pretty easy to see how GJ-11 and follow-on class could be used to launch saturation attacks against enemy air defense/military base/naval ships. Having very stealthy flywing type of UCAV could allow them to get close enough to a carrier group, start jamming/confusing/spoofing naval radars and then launch PGMs or ARMs against high valued naval ships to take out the sensor/VLS systems on them. Between something like GJ-11 and XQ-58A, I would much rather have GJ-11, since the former would have better stealth, range and payload. On top of that, the flywing design also allow carrying larger conformal electronic antennas to perform ISR tasks and EW missions. While it would be interesting for them to develop something like FH-97 for domestic use, I don't if it would have any advantage over GJ-11.

For the latter, I think there needs to be continued investment in 3 areas: EW, AEW and interception. For the first one, that could come in the form of having even more EW aircraft in the air. That could be either manned or unmanned. Any manned/unmanned teaming solution would lose a lot of its effectiveness if the UCAVs lose communication with the manned aircraft. USAF has talked about operating F-22/35 without communication in a really competitive high intensity environment. I'm not sure how something like XQ-58A would far in such an environment.

Secondly, I think they will need to continue investing in procuring more manned (like KJ-200/500) and unmanned (like Divine Eagle) AEW solutions. If there are more targets coming that are stealthy, then you also need more AEW platform in the air to detect them and coordinate interceptions. In order to cover China's very long air space, quantity really matters.

Thirdly, how do you intercept more attacking aircraft? The most obvious suggestion would be expanding their brigade/bases sizes to have more J-20s and J-16s in the coastal areas. They are already doing that. It should be very easy for a modern manned aircraft to shoot down a first or second generation UCAV. Aside from that, could they develop more A2A type of UCAVs? Such a UCAV would have lower cost, maintenace and longer endurance than a manned aircraft. They'd be more attritable. They could be used to attack UCAVs and helicopters and larger aircraft. As AI continue to improve, such UCAVs will also become more capable. Although, I don't think they will be able to defeat manned fighter jet anytime soon. We've seen something like Anjian UCAV. That looks to be what I would imagine an A2A UCAV would look like. I'd be curious to see if PLAAF gives funding to put that concept into a real program in the near future.
 

tphuang

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We have seen GJ-11…??? AFAIK we have only seen mock ups so far!

You got me. Well, at least we've seen their demonstrator version. But they have received a GJ designation, so they are going to join service at some point. I don't think we can say the same about CH-7 and FH-97. Those seem to just be looking to attract export contracts.
 
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