PLA (strategic) news, pics, and videos
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A major fire broke out on August 16 in China on the Soviet heavy aircraft carrier Minsk of Project 1143.2. The Minsk cruiser was sold to South Korea for scrap in 1995, and was bought by a Chinese company in 1998 and towed to Shenzhen. In 2000, the Minsk cruiser was placed in the Minsk World amusement park, and in 2017, it was towed to Nantong for a new amusement park. During the dismantling of the ship's structure, a fire broke out on it, which intensified on the night of August 17. Perhaps these are the last shots of the Minsk cruiser and its story will end here.
China's Skywalker drone with fiber optic control is shown in China. The FPV drone is manufactured by Skywalker Technology Co., Ltd from Wuhan. Depending on the task, the FPV drone can be equipped with reels with different lengths of fiber optic cable. At the moment, the drone can fly at a distance of 1, 5 and 10 km. Due to the use of a reel with a fiber optic cable, the weight of the drone's warhead is reduced, there is no data on it. For example, a reel with a 5 km cable weighs 1.1 kg, therefore a reel with a 10 km cable will weigh about 2 kg. In this configuration, the payload weight of the drone will be about 3 kg, which makes it possible to use the drone only against lightly armored vehicles.
Depending on what is considered payload 3kg is sufficient for a PG-7VL RPG 7 round, or approximately an 82mm HE mortar round (3.14 kg but with the stabilizing fins).
Both of those should be able to perforate almost any IFV/APC and tanks too depending on add on armour and location of the strike.
What is it about?
Roughly translated:
Key points:
- 3 years from public disclosure (although many don't seem to mind if not outright missed it) to actual thing/platform completion/roll-out
- The US have similar thing/platform in use for 10+ years
- Chinese counterpart is better/more complete and can be available in larger numbers
So what is exactly that thing/platform?
RQ-180-counterpart?
V-280-conterpart?
Some kind of sub-orbital/orbital craft?
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Inb4 it's stealth helicopters. US had them for 10+ years, but I can easily see China building them more efficiently and actually making them widespread for airborne troops.
For RQ-180 equivalent, I think China has been flying them for very long. They were the first to fly a stealth flying wing UAV, and GJ-11 was "inducted" but nowhere (publicly) to be seen. China places so much emphasis on its non stealthy ISR drones and they've also had the tech to make a stealth ISR drone, it would be strange if they haven't been having them for 10+ years at least as well.
It might be referring to stealthy flying wing UCAVs -- i.e.: that the US has had a stealthy flying wing UCAV in very limited use (perhaps the RQ-180 has a payload bay), but we all know GJ-11 exists and is being pursued for proper development and probably implementation on a larger scale.