China Pursues “New Methods” of Drone Combat

The Chinese military reports it is refining a cutting-edge ability to network unmanned systems between the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Army in coordinated, remotely operated drone attack operations.

Remotely controlling attack drones using datalinks and satellites has, of course, been possible for decades with the US military, and China is likely to operate with this technology as well. What may be a step forward for the Chinese, however, may pertain to the extent of networking and multi-domain connectivity the PLA Air Force is now capable of.

A Chinese government-backed newspaper called the Global Times says the PLA Air Force has been pioneering new “methods of drone combat” involving operations with other services.

“Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force has been practicing new methods of drone combat, including remote-controlled takeoffs and landings and jointly operating with other military services and branches. In a recent exercise held in the deserts of Northwest China, a GJ-2 armed reconnaissance drone conducted reconnaissance and strike training in a realistic combat scenario. The drone operators, operating the drone remotely from a location far away from the airfield, were tasked to search, detect, identify, locate and attack multiple targets within a single sortie,” the Global Times reports.

On the surface, the Chinese newspaper report indicates the presence of simple, long-established drone combat operational possibilities, yet the true measure of progress or potential “breakthroughs” likely pertain to the extent of multi-domain networking. For many years now, the PLA has been conducting joint, multi-service training exercises in a way that reveals a clear attempt to replicate US military multi-domain task force training. For many years, Congressional and Pentagon decision-makers have documented concern about Chinese efforts to steal military technology and “replicate” US weapons systems in their own military, yet what is lesser known is the extent to which the Chinese military also appears to copy, replicate or “steal” cutting edge US tactics.

Chinese multi-domain attack connectivity linking different services to one another appears as an effort to replicate what is arguably the most significant US military program … Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). The idea is to engineer a meshed network of dispersed yet securely connected combat nodes across a combat area. The intent of JADC2 is, among other things, oriented toward reducing sensor-to-shooter time to expedite a combat decision-making cycle and stay in front of an adversary.

This relies not only on transmitting information in a secure fashion but also on executing data and information processing, organization, analysis, and data fusion. It could be described as information-driven warfare, an effort to cover dispersed and otherwise disconnected combat platforms or nodes, whether they be fighter jets, bombers, tanks, drones, or ground control centers, to one another in real-time.

In order to do this, a vast amount of sensor data needs to not only be gathered but properly processed and analyzed so the most pressing and relevant details are identified and transmitted across the force according to mission needs and changing threats. This is part of why so much of JADC2 is being improved through the application of AI-empowered algorithms, computers, and databases.

JADC2 could be considered as “defining” in terms of how the Pentagon plans to win future wars … however, such a strategic approach may not be being pursued by the US alone. Specifically, China’s well-known military modernization push now appears to be copying JADC2 or doing its own version in an effort to expand and expedite networking.

This Chinese concept, which very closely resembles the Pentagon’s JADC2, has for years been discussed in Chinese papers in the context of developing and deploying a new Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) airplane, something which is itself a copy of several US surveillance planes such as the US Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye.

While discussing the maturation of China’s new AWACS last year, China’s Global Times newspaper quotes its military officials saying that AWACS will “likely not be one single early warning aircraft but a cluster of platforms that can accomplish different missions and build an information network.

This concept sounds exactly like JADC2 as well as the US Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System.

“But war is not about just an individual aircraft, but a system, so there should be space, aerial, ground, maritime and underwater platforms integrated together and doing their job, Lu said, noting that this will enhance the joint combat capability based on an information network system,” the chief designer of China’s KJ-2000 early warning aircraft, said as quoted in a Global Times newspaper article last year.

Of course, however promising a combat strategy may appear, its execution is, of course, the true test of operational functionality in warfare. Networks need to be hardened, ranges need to be extended, gathered data and sensor information need to be processed, and numerous transport layer avenues of communication need to be refined, demonstrated, and ready for operations. This can be SATCOM connectivity, GPS guidance, RF datalink information exchange, software-defined radio, or even newer possibilities such as optical or laser communication.

The United States has for many years now been developing and emphasizing multi-domain operations with a mind to how new technologies are creating synergies, opening up data-sharing networks, and inspiring fast-moving and sweeping tactical adjustments to modern warfare preparations. US Army, Navy, and Air Force multi-domain task forces have been operating in the Pacific for several years now, exploring new realms of joint combat interoperability, tactics, and strategies.

During the Army’s several Project Convergence experiments, the US Army ground forces succeeded in exchanging key targeting specifics with overhead F-35Bs in what was a breakthrough air-to-ground and ground-to-air multi-service connectivity demonstration.

Now, surprise, surprise, a Chinese newspaper reported that the PLA is now linking its Army and Air Force units into a single, unified combat alert duty in an effort to connect air defense radar and communications with PLA ground brigades.

“Thanks to the integration, the Army air defense brigades have become key nodes in Air Force early warning systems, as Army radars are more accurate and make up for blind zones of the Air Force’s early warning network, the report said, noting that the Army also gained a longer detection range that enabled troops to find enemies and prepare for attacks earlier, as the Air Force shares all intelligence through the network,” the Chinese-backed Global Times reported in 2021.

Sharing intelligence through a network, as described by the Chinese paper, is something that seems to be an obvious combat strategy but has taken on new meaning and tactical relevance in the age of AI, cyber-hardened connectivity, long-range sensors, and precision weaponry. Weapons platforms are no longer merely attack systems but also “nodes” on an interconnected information-sharing warfare network, forming a “kill web.”

This Chinese move to network air and ground air defenses may or may not be particularly advanced, as its effectiveness will pertain to the quality of the network transport layers, hardened or “jam-proof” signal transmission, data analysis and organization, near real-time analytics, and information processing. All of these things are maturing quickly within the US military, which has just, within the last year or two, hit several new levels of joint interoperability and massively expedited sensor-to-shooter time cycles. The Army’s Integrated Battle Command System, for instance, builds a web relay between otherwise dispersed or disconnected radar nodes, enabling target track sharing, which has, in several instances, shown it can interoperate with air platforms such as an F-35.

It would not seem to be a stretch at all to view these PLA joint maneuvers as a visible effort to replicate the Pentagon’s emerging Joint All Domain Command and Control program. The relative success of any kind of attempted Chinese multi-domain interoperability and the way it reshapes combat tactics and maneuver formations will rely in large measure upon the strength, speed, and security of its networks. That is what will be necessary to bring the new tactical landscape to fruition as nodes or combat positions will increasingly be more dispersed, disaggregated, and separated by distances and different domains.

China and US: Weapons Similarities

Several years after the USS Ford-class carriers emerged onto the scene with a larger, flatter flight deck, the Chinese abandoned its “ski-jump” aircraft carrier design in favor of something that looks nearly identical to a US Ford-class configuration.

The now emerging Chinese VT5 “light tank” could easily be seen as a conceptual and technical rip-off of the US Army’s now underway Mobile Protected Firepower program to engineer a faster, more agile, and deployable lethal battle tank.

Similarities between the J-31, J-20, and US 5th Generation stealth aircraft have been discussed for many years now, given the recognizable extent to which the external stealth configuration resembles US stealth renderings such as an F-35 blended wing-body configuration, internal weapons bay, and seemingly seamless bolting or connecting of fuselage segments.

China’s Gongi-11 stealth attack drone, revealed in a parade in 2019, seems to almost exactly parallel or combine attributes from the US Navy’s previous X-47B stealthy carrier-launched drone and the existing RQ-170 stealth surveillance drone.

Weapons Applications

The apparent similarities do not seem limited merely to external design but expand to weapons applications as well.

China’s large, medium-altitude reconnaissance drone, the WJ-700, not only mirrors the US Reaper in appearance but is also armed with an anti-ship missile. A large drone armed with an anti-ship missile may even be an attempt to take the weaponization of something like the US Reaper to a new level. The Reaper now fires a wide-ranging arsenal of weapons, including the recent addition of the AIM-9X air-to-air missile, yet it does not seem clear that the US now operates a drone armed with an anti-ship missile.

Certainly, fixed-wing aircraft such as a B-1B bomber or fighter jet can shoot something like a Long Range Anti-Ship missile from the air, and Northrop Grumman and DARPA are now engineering a new “Long-shot” armed drone platform to potentially fill this gap.

This piece first appeared in Warrior Maven, a Military Content Group site.