In light of the Mugin-5 attack yesterday, I was just trying to think about the possibility of how large number of low cost loitering drones would work for PLA.
I see several possible applications.
Fixed wing suicidal drones - For possible mass drone attacks against targets in Taiwan or first island chain. For this role, the requirement would be something that can cruise at 120 to 150 km/h for 700 km and carry up to 50 kg of payload. It needs to be able to take off from land and fixed decks. It would need to have some computing power to process data and determine how long to loiter and how to find target. It would have Beidou navigation and military grade sensors/communication systems. It could use a more fuel efficient engine and be a little larger. So, something like 150 kg takeoff weight, with 40 kg payload and a large enough fuel tank to support loitering 700 km. Something like this will probably end up being more like 50k than 20k in the case of Mugin-5. But even 20k of this type of drones would only cost $1 billion (provided they can keep the unit cost down). It would be something that can fly over, identify the target to attack with a HALE reconnaissance drone and attack the fuel tank or radar or communication or go after the repair shed or anything else that could keep an island defense down. It could either do suicidal attack on an aircraft looking to get repaired or waiting to take off. It would be able to target an island operation in a much more surgical way than dropping PGMs. If an islands defense gets its air defense significantly degraded by an initial ballistic missile attack, this could be something that keeps these bases down through follow on attacks.
VTOL drones - This would be something that's extremely useful off large surface combatant in the role of SAR or ASW. There are some interesting concepts of this. There are the traditional UAV helicopters that we've seen off Chinese surface combatants since the early 2010s. There is the VTOL fixed wing UAV we saw off CV-17 a few pages back. There is the SD-40 VTOL drone with 6 hours endurance . The commercial market has a lot of quadcopter drones from DJI, but I'm not sure you can actually make it large/powerful enough to operate with long endurance in sea. there is also this Hydrogen power VTOL that set record with 800 km operating range . You can see in this example, a electric converted to hydrogen powered quadcopter went from having 1 hour to 3 hour of endurance . I'd imagine something with 6 to 9 hour endurance is more than sufficient. It will ideally have like a 50+ kg takeoff weight and can carry sensors or communication devices. and fly at 150 to 200 km/h. So, it can hopefully loiter 200 km away from a ship and land on the original ship or another ship's helo deck. For fixed wing type, it would be nice for the wings to be foldable. Again, I have no idea how much this would cost. I think China should be able to build them for under 50k, but having 1000 of these would allow PLAN surface combatants to have much better reconnaissance against incoming missiles, decoys, loiter drones. It could possibly allow them to help with ASW effort, since you'd be able to cover more area.
Light multi purpose drone - This would be great to operate off carriers and LHD/LPDs. You would not expect them to be as capable as something like gj2. They should not require catapult for takeoff. In my mind, they would seriously enhance the fire power of a ship with fixed deck. If you can have up to 50 of these drones that are up to 600 kg in max takeoff weight and can carry up to 150 kg in payload. They'd be able to fly loiter 300 km off the fixed deck, drop a bomb and then come back. They can fly at up to 300 km/h instead of 150. 8 hours of endurance with 100 kg payload would be plenty. With up to 150 kg payload, it could carry multiple bombs/missiles or really capable sensors or even a really light dipping sonar. I would put something like this at maybe 1 million each. You could order 500 of them to be operated off various flat decks.
Dedicated naval attack drone - this would be something like gj11 that would attack off type 076 lhd. It can be launched off catapult. It would have very good ai and be able to operate autonomously with minimal communication. It would ideally be very stealthy, have long combat radius and higher speed requirements (like mach 0.7 cruising speed with turbofan engine). It would be able to carry 1t payload internally and another 2t payload on it's hard point. Something like this would probably cost $20 million each. You would want at most 10 of them on each deck. They should have higher availability than regular manned aircraft, so can make multiple sorties per day. You could have them as part of manned unmanned teaming with manned stealth aircraft.
I see several possible applications.
Fixed wing suicidal drones - For possible mass drone attacks against targets in Taiwan or first island chain. For this role, the requirement would be something that can cruise at 120 to 150 km/h for 700 km and carry up to 50 kg of payload. It needs to be able to take off from land and fixed decks. It would need to have some computing power to process data and determine how long to loiter and how to find target. It would have Beidou navigation and military grade sensors/communication systems. It could use a more fuel efficient engine and be a little larger. So, something like 150 kg takeoff weight, with 40 kg payload and a large enough fuel tank to support loitering 700 km. Something like this will probably end up being more like 50k than 20k in the case of Mugin-5. But even 20k of this type of drones would only cost $1 billion (provided they can keep the unit cost down). It would be something that can fly over, identify the target to attack with a HALE reconnaissance drone and attack the fuel tank or radar or communication or go after the repair shed or anything else that could keep an island defense down. It could either do suicidal attack on an aircraft looking to get repaired or waiting to take off. It would be able to target an island operation in a much more surgical way than dropping PGMs. If an islands defense gets its air defense significantly degraded by an initial ballistic missile attack, this could be something that keeps these bases down through follow on attacks.
VTOL drones - This would be something that's extremely useful off large surface combatant in the role of SAR or ASW. There are some interesting concepts of this. There are the traditional UAV helicopters that we've seen off Chinese surface combatants since the early 2010s. There is the VTOL fixed wing UAV we saw off CV-17 a few pages back. There is the SD-40 VTOL drone with 6 hours endurance . The commercial market has a lot of quadcopter drones from DJI, but I'm not sure you can actually make it large/powerful enough to operate with long endurance in sea. there is also this Hydrogen power VTOL that set record with 800 km operating range . You can see in this example, a electric converted to hydrogen powered quadcopter went from having 1 hour to 3 hour of endurance . I'd imagine something with 6 to 9 hour endurance is more than sufficient. It will ideally have like a 50+ kg takeoff weight and can carry sensors or communication devices. and fly at 150 to 200 km/h. So, it can hopefully loiter 200 km away from a ship and land on the original ship or another ship's helo deck. For fixed wing type, it would be nice for the wings to be foldable. Again, I have no idea how much this would cost. I think China should be able to build them for under 50k, but having 1000 of these would allow PLAN surface combatants to have much better reconnaissance against incoming missiles, decoys, loiter drones. It could possibly allow them to help with ASW effort, since you'd be able to cover more area.
Light multi purpose drone - This would be great to operate off carriers and LHD/LPDs. You would not expect them to be as capable as something like gj2. They should not require catapult for takeoff. In my mind, they would seriously enhance the fire power of a ship with fixed deck. If you can have up to 50 of these drones that are up to 600 kg in max takeoff weight and can carry up to 150 kg in payload. They'd be able to fly loiter 300 km off the fixed deck, drop a bomb and then come back. They can fly at up to 300 km/h instead of 150. 8 hours of endurance with 100 kg payload would be plenty. With up to 150 kg payload, it could carry multiple bombs/missiles or really capable sensors or even a really light dipping sonar. I would put something like this at maybe 1 million each. You could order 500 of them to be operated off various flat decks.
Dedicated naval attack drone - this would be something like gj11 that would attack off type 076 lhd. It can be launched off catapult. It would have very good ai and be able to operate autonomously with minimal communication. It would ideally be very stealthy, have long combat radius and higher speed requirements (like mach 0.7 cruising speed with turbofan engine). It would be able to carry 1t payload internally and another 2t payload on it's hard point. Something like this would probably cost $20 million each. You would want at most 10 of them on each deck. They should have higher availability than regular manned aircraft, so can make multiple sorties per day. You could have them as part of manned unmanned teaming with manned stealth aircraft.
