Chinese UAV/UCAV development

tankphobia said:

It's all about detection on the defense tho, I'd argue that you don't want too many missiles on one platform but rather distributed such that you won't lose a lot of expensive munitions if for whatever reason the radar is off as we've seen happen more than a few times recently.

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I think the point of these platforms is that the missiles and the platform themselves are cheap low end platforms that can intercept low speed targets like cheap drones and pgms and maybe even subsonic cruise missiles. But you wouldn't want them anywhere around supersonic missiles.

tphuang said:

oh yes, I love it. That's enough range and payload for pretty much any mission within first island chain. They could even use it to attack Guam if they are really adventurous. Wow, this thing is crazily capable.

btw, saw the PL-10E hanging there. That's kind of interesting. Could be used to target other drones and helicopters I guess.

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Another thought about it carry aams. Could they utilize wl3 as shooters in a much larger theater command? So this would offload some of the missile carrying role to ucavs we're are a lot more attritable and have much lower signature than j16s. And then the missiles can be guided to target by AWACS or j20s.

These bombardment of UAV reminds me of the old era of color TV production tsunami, when hundreds of production facilities were being brought into the market all over China. China is becoming a kingdom of unmanned anything everything. Like fireworks invented by our ancestors, for the moment, Chinese are using UoT (Unmanned of Things) in all kinds of use cases for civil society. But fundamentally, almost all UoT stuff can be dual-purpose. What if there were a million UoT objects shown up above the island of Taiwan? When quantity reaches to a critical threshold, itself becomes quality, and the game would be over just by showing up. Like the Internet, UAV was invented for Chinese, intentionally or unintentionally.

Did we have any news one the CH-6 series? How does it compare to the WL-3?

tphuang said:

Another thought about it carry aams. Could they utilize wl3 as shooters in a much larger theater command? So this would offload some of the missile carrying role to ucavs we're are a lot more attritable and have much lower signature than j16s. And then the missiles can be guided to target by AWACS or j20s.

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Is there a way to "mimick" the radar signature of one uav to a fighter that the PLAAF fields? With Lüneburg lenses?

Would make it even harder for the defender to discern different types of platforms.


Especially with turbine driven uav, which cruising speed is more akin to J-16, than a prop drone

Clark Gap said:

WingLoong-3:

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I could be mistaken, but there seems to be be a cruise missile, a short range AAM, a long range AAM, on one side, and a selection of PGMs on the other.

The center line seems to sport EW gear and the sensor ball looks like it could be an actual laser!

Andy1974 said:

I could be mistaken, but there seems to be be a cruise missile, a short range AAM, a long range AAM, on one side, and a selection of PGMs on the other.

The center line seems to sport EW gear and the sensor ball looks like it could be an actual laser!

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yeah, there is a lot going on there. I think this is just to showcase how they could utilize it rather than how they will necessarily utilize it.

The size difference between WL-2D and WL-3 is quite the contrast.

The increased range/loitering time and payload really adds a lot of capabilities to the platform. They are showcasing it here, but I'm not sure if they should export something like this yet.

I'd like to see PLA order a lot of these guys.

tphuang said:

oh yes, I love it. That's enough range and payload for pretty much any mission within first island chain. They could even use it to attack Guam if they are really adventurous. Wow, this thing is crazily capable.

btw, saw the PL-10E hanging there. That's kind of interesting. Could be used to target other drones and helicopters I guess.

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In your Guam scenario, I think it would actually be very useful to have air to air missiles like PL-10 since the drone will most likely not have fighter escort.

tphuang said:

btw, saw the PL-10E hanging there. That's kind of interesting. Could be used to target other drones and helicopters I guess.

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Was going to comment on that too; looks like we might be getting closer to overcoming limitations on air to air capabilities for drones.

tphuang said:

Another thought about it carry aams. Could they utilize wl3 as shooters in a much larger theater command? So this would offload some of the missile carrying role to ucavs we're are a lot more attritable and have much lower signature than j16s. And then the missiles can be guided to target by AWACS or j20s.

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Seems too slow for such a role. The UCAV in question at the very least needs to be jet propelled, if not supersonic.