Chinese UAV/UCAV development

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Hendrik_2000

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Another swarm UAV experimentation this time from NUDT
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NUDT University flies a swarm of fixed-wing drones

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According to
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, a team of researchers from the Chinese military university National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) successfully tested, in early December, a swarm of " several tens of fixed-wing drones.

The text has given little detail - it is only learned that the test had the objective of evaluating autonomous flight technologies in training, and the ability of the swarm to conduct a reconnaissance mission to the above a certain area.

The project and development work is led by Professor SHEN Lin Cheng (沈 林 成), PhD supervisor and Chair of the NUDT Institute of Artificial Intelligence Sciences.

"The team has been working for nine months on the preparation of this swarm test, sometimes we have to do a hundred test flights a day," says the former director of the institute of electro-mechanical engineering and automation, "We have precise short, medium and long term objectives, which are consistent with those set by the government on the modernization of the Chinese armed forces by 2020, 2035 and 2050."

Despite "rudimentary" testing site conditions, the NUDT research team of an average age of 30 years has achieved a breakthrough in the areas of parallel perception, behavioral intention prediction, and Autonomous flight control focused on the handling of random incidents, says the People's Liberation Army Daily article .

Note that the same university team has already conducted another swarm trial in the month of October, but the number of drones was limited to only "a few," according to
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.

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Quadrotor drone designed by NUDT students
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A small fixed-wing UAV designed by NUDT
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At least two other entities in China are currently working on drone swarm projects. In June this year, the Chinese electronic giant CETC performed
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(1 was lost after take-off). The swarm gathered autonomously in flight and conducted tests around several topics, such as ad-hoc networking, autonomous mission squadron clustering, distributed-mode surveillance, and target encirclement. for example.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), meanwhile, also conducted
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, launched by an electromagnetic catapult on top of a special balloon.

Apart from the NUDT, the CETC and the CAS, the analysis of published R & D documents shows that at least a dozen Chinese universities and industrialists have also launched research projects on technologies related to the collaborative work of drones - air, naval or land - and possible applications of the swarm of drones in the military.

To be continued.

Henri K.
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
Chinese Air Force - Chengfei UAVmovie "watchman" debut
Shadw warrior?
If you look carefully this video you will see how young the design team are
I will say average age between 20 -30
That expansion of Tertiary education certainly paid off
CAC have very high hiring standards for new grads. Only applicants from the best tier 1 universities like beihang, beida, etc are even considered. And most that apply are rejected. Also those that are accepted have to have background check.

Even with all those criteria above, my uncle complains the kids are too dumb these days. His words were "beihang is dropping their standards"... Maybe he is just old...lol. When my grandmother taught there, she only had classes of 15-20 people, now its more than 10x that.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
A
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CH-3B destroyed at Boko Haram vehicle workshop. The CH-3B can be loaded with YC-200 guided bombs and AR-1 anti-tank missiles? The NAF has at least 5 in service delivered in 2014.

NIGERIAN AIR FORCE REMOTELY PILOTED AIRCRAFT DESTROYS EMERGING BOKO HARAM TERRORISTS VEHICLE WORKSHOP A Nigerian Air Force (NAF) Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), on 15 January 2018, successfully destroyed an emerging Boko Haram Terrorists (BHT) vehicle workshop in the Sambisa general area. A NAF Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) platform had previously discovered that BHT vehicles were parked in the location. Consequently, a NAF RPA was detailed to conduct armed reconnaissance in search of BHT vehicles and terrorists around the location, which was apparently being used as a vehicle workshop. The RPA discovered that BHT motorcycles and vehicles, including a BHT Commander’s vehicle were parked in the targeted area. Additionally, several terrorists were seen moving intermittently within the targeted area. The subsequent air strike by the NAF RPA resulted in the immediate destruction of the vehicles in the targeted location, killing all the BHTs inside it, as no survivors were seen scampering from the location after impact.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Full report is available in PDF format click the link below
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Battlefield Singularity


Artificial Intelligence, Military Revolution, and China’s Future Military Power

By
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Preface
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast heating up as a key area of strategic competition. U.S. leaders have signaled that AI is a major component of the Defense Department’s strategy to reinvigorate American military technological dominance. In October 2016, the U.S. government released a “National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan,” one of three
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on AI issued by the Obama administration. Other nations have similarly taken note of the transformative potential of AI. In July 2017, China released its own national-level
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. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin
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, “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [artificial intelligence] will become the ruler of the world.”

Home to many of the world’s top AI companies, China is poised to be a major player in this unfolding competition. In this in-depth analytic report, CNAS adjunct fellow Elsa Kania explores China’s strategy for developing and implementing AI technology for military applications. Drawing on open-source Chinese-language documents, Ms. Kania explains Chinese strategic thinking on AI and specific military applications that Chinese leaders envision. Her report is a must-read for national security professionals concerned about maintaining U.S. strategic advantage in an era of rapid technological change.

Paul Scharre is a senior fellow and Director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He is a former Army Ranger and Pentagon policy official and author of the forthcoming book Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, to be published in April 2018.

Executive Summary
Although technological advantage has been a key pillar of U.S. military power and national competitiveness, China is starting to catch up in its quest to become a “science and technology superpower” (科技强国). While the U.S. military possessed an early edge in technologies critical to information-age warfare, primacy in artificial intelligence (AI), likely integral in future warfare, could remain contested between the United States and China. Indeed, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing advances in impactful and disruptive military applications of AI. Although this military dimension of China’s rise in AI has remained relatively opaque, the available Chinese-language open-source materials reveal initial trends in PLA thinking and progress.

The Chinese leadership is advancing an “innovation-driven” strategy for civilian and military development, aiming to become the world’s “premier innovation center” in AI by 2030. Certainly, a range of challenges, including serious shortcomings in human capital, may inhibit progress, and China presently continues to lag behind the United States in cutting-edge research and development. However, China’s rapid rise and future trajectory in AI could be enabled by critical systemic and structural advantages, including likely levels of funding and investment, potential human talent resources, and massive amounts of data. AI is a high-level priority within China’s national agenda for military-civil fusion (军民融合), and this strategic approach could enable the PLA to take full advantage of private sector progress in AI to enhance its military capabilities.

Although the PLA’s initial thinking on AI in warfare has been influenced by careful analysis of U.S. military initiatives, its approach could progressively diverge from that of the United States, based on its distinct strategic culture and organizational dynamics. The PLA anticipates that the advent of AI could fundamentally change the character of warfare, resulting in a transformation from today’s “informatized” (信息化) ways of warfare to future “intelligentized” (智能化) warfare, in which AI will be critical to military power. The PLA will likely leverage AI to enhance its future capabilities, including in intelligent and autonomous unmanned systems; AI-enabled data fusion, information processing, and intelligence analysis; war-gaming, simulation, and training; defense, offense, and command in information warfare; and intelligent support to command decision-making. At present, the PLA is funding a wide range of projects involving AI, and the Chinese defense industry and PLA research institutes are pursuing extensive research and development, in some cases partnering with private enterprises.

This could be the start of a major shift in the PLA’s strategic approach, beyond its traditional asymmetric focus on targeting U.S. vulnerabilities to the offset-oriented pursuit of competition to innovate. The PLA is seeking to engage in “leapfrog development” (跨越发展) to achieve a decisive edge in “strategic front-line” (战略前沿) technologies, in which the United States has not realized and may not be able to achieve a decisive advantage. The PLA is unlikely to pursue a linear trajectory or follow the track of U.S. military modernization, but rather could take a different path. Since the 1990s, the PLA has focused on the development of “trump card” (杀手锏) weapons that target vulnerabilities in U.S. battle networks, seeking to develop, in the words of then-Central Military Commission (CMC) Chairman Jiang Zemin, those weapons that “the enemy is most fearful of.” This asymmetric thinking will likely persist in the PLA’s approach to AI. For instance, the PLA may seek to use swarms to target and saturate the defenses of U.S. aircraft carriers. However, China is no longer in a position of technological inferiority but rather sees itself as close to catching up with and overtaking the United States in AI. As such, the PLA intends to achieve an advantage through changing paradigms in warfare with military innovation, thus seizing the “commanding heights” (制高点) of future military competition.

As the U.S. and China compete to innovate in AI, the trajectories of their respective advances will impact the future military and strategic balance. The PLA is acutely aware of the criticality of adapting to and capitalizing upon progress in AI, fearing the emergence of a ‘generational gap’ between its capabilities and that of the U.S. military, which is perceived as a powerful adversary (强敌) and thus the key metric for comparison. Since China may possess the potential to equal or surpass the United States in this critical technology, the U.S. military must recognize the PLA’s emergence as a true peer competitor and reevaluate the nature of U.S.-China military and technological competition.

As the PLA attempts to overtake, rather than just catch up with or match, U.S. progress in this domain, it will be vital to understand and take into account the PLA’s evolving approach and advances. In particular, the PLA’s capacity to leverage military applications of AI could prove distinctive due to its model of military-civil fusion, expansive concept of “intelligentization,” and focus on AI-enabled command decision-making. Certain PLA thinkers even anticipate the approach of a “singularity” on the battlefield, at which human cognition can no longer keep pace with the speed of decision-making and tempo of combat in future warfare. While recognizing the importance of human-machine collaboration, and likely concerned with issues of controllability, the PLA could prove less adverse to the prospect of taking humans ‘out of the loop’ to achieve an advantage.

Looking forward, the PLA’s militarization of AI will influence the trajectory of this unfolding military revolution, presenting a unique strategic challenge to the United States. In response, the United States must work to formulate a long-term, whole-of-nation strategy to support critical determinants of national competitiveness in AI. While taking steps to mitigate illicit and problematic technology transfers, the United States should ensure that there is adequate funding for and investments in next-generation research and development, averting the risks of an “innovation deficit.” It is also critical to sustain and build upon the current U.S. competitive advantage in human capital through formulating policies to educate and attract top talent. However, the U.S. military must prepare for a future in which the United States may no longer possess technological predominance, particularly through focusing on the human factors and organizational capacity that are critical determinants of successful defense innovation. As the intensification of military and strategic competition in AI could result in destabilizing arms race dynamics, the United States should also explore options to mitigate the risks to strategic stability that could result from great powers’ pursuit of AI-enabled capabilities to achieve military advantage.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
The BZK-005 Plateau Variant UAV was awarded the National Sci & Tech Progress Award (first class) this year with 3 key technologies: no compromise on the carrying capacity, E/O turret & SAR integration, live hi-res image transmission in long distance.
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I guess Beihang University is the cradle of UAV development in China Professor Xiang Jinwu of Beijing Institute of Unmanned Systems is the pioneer.The story show the team enduring all kind of hardship yet still continue on with hard work and persistence to finally succed in building prototype
Seemlike this BZK-005 UAv is equipped with SAR, E/O and designed to operate in high plateau
Thye have a new and upgraded model I believe recently unveiled

From dafeng cao
11/2/2017, Lhasa Gongga Airport, BZK-005 UAV.
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Here is google translation
Record two won the first prize of national scientific and technological progress of the UAC drone team


In nature, eagles are known for their sharp eyesight. Even in a few kilometers or even tens of thousands of meters above the sky, the turmoil on the ground still can not escape its eyes.

In the modern national defense and military operations there is also an "eagle," which is flying high and farther away, can travel far and near at night and day and night without a word, and constantly sends back information. Often it is "a soldier who does not fight with infighting" This is the power of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

At the recent National Science and Technology Awards 2017, the "Long Eagle Plateau Long-range Unmanned Reconnaissance System" from Beihang University won the first prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award. And also the school "Long Eagle" series drone again won this award. after 2009,

The birth of "Long Eagle" made China the third country that self-developed drone-based UAV after the United States and Israel, and upgraded our UAV design, manufacture and test to the international first-class ranks. "And behind it is the unremitting efforts of more than 100 people in the team for 18 years." The chief architect of the "Long Eagle" series of UAVs, Professor Xiang Jinwu of Beijing Institute of Unmanned Systems, said.

Tackle: a group of "the most lovely people"

Long flight drones enjoy the "satellites in the atmosphere" in the world, in order to better protect the homeland, our drones must achieve flight from short to long distance, long voyage across. This historic task, handed over to the hands of the UAV team.

In 2000, Beihang officially undertook the task of developing "Long Eagle" model, and the burden finally fell on the shoulders of Jin Wu. Faced with major national needs, he resolutely interrupted the normal research and teaching tasks, to the front of model development.

"At the beginning, there were only about 30 people who were scattered in multiple places." Xiang Jinwu recalled that subsequently, under the comprehensive deployment of schools, a backbone faculty member of the relevant faculty was gradually formed and the undergraduate graduates served as reserve forces. Talented people across the country gathered in the team, "and soon, specialized research building also completed."

At that time, no pre-research, no prototype, no reference material "Eagle" research team is facing the biggest problem. "We do not have the experience of model development, not even aircraft, and even the number of aircraft are a handful." Guo Hong, chief quality officer said, "The original design of the UAV shape and today has a great world Do not remember how many drawings have been drawn, how much data has been calculated.

Finally, finally a prototype. In 2002, the team was stationed in a abandoned barrack in Shahe City, Xingtai City, Hebei Province, where it flew at a nearby airport.

"The conditions are very tough, the local water and alkaline is very strong, drinking it cause stomach trouble." Now Dean Wang Yangzhu laments, almost 20 years old abandoned barracks. In winter without heating, wearing a hat to sleep or else we will be frozen, shivering. "But we still work 11 hours a day. Weekends are or no weekends. Some of the key people go out for 300 days in a year and travel back to Beijing instead of traveling on business."

December 12, 2004, the team finally paid off for the hard work - "Eagle" series first unmanned aerial vehicle successfully fly on this day.
Later, in 2007, the model prototype was delivered in 2009, it won the first prize of national science and technology progress. But the players did not stop there. This time, they set their sights on the plateau.

Climb: towards the plateau higher

Due to its vast territory and complex terrain, in order to safeguard its territorial integrity and security, the flight footprint of the UAV needs to cover all corners of the motherland. However, the unique atmospheric conditions at the plateau have made the ordinary UAV "impossible." Since it was determined to develop the "Long Eagle" plateau, it will be the primary challenge for the team to upgrade to the plateau altitude and achieve the capability of the entire territory.

In 2013, the team field start work at a plateau airport in western Sichuan. At 4260 meters above sea level, a serious plateau reaction followed; water can not be boiled, cooked unfamiliar, can not sleep at night; State Road 318 dangerous road conditions. We can drive every day for only dozens of kilometers from the resident and the airport. low temperature, low pressure, hypoxia, aircraft power down, the engine start difficulty, team members repeatedly test day and night. In this way for two months, they finally developed a new power control mode for the engine.

"Being able to start immediately and carrying capacity has not changed, It is the same with the low altitude." Deputy Chief Designer Ma Tielin proudly said that another technology pioneer of the "Eagle" plateau type is active / passive weather information acquisition, through With the photoelectric and radar, to solve the night or rain and snow can not be imaging problems.

"The high-speed long-distance real-time measurement and control information transmission is the third major technological breakthrough in the 'Long Eagle' plateau model, enabling rapid real-time image transmission with high definition images." Xiang Jinwu said that the "Long Eagle" plateau solution solved the " Fly, look, pass "three aspects of the technical problems, it has also been the national science and technology progress award once again favor.

Inheritance: Three generations of "Long Eagle"

In response to major national strategic needs, UAV created a number of "firsts" in the history of UAVs in China. As a result, some achievements of the UAVs - the "eagle eye" of the third generations - were accomplished.

In the 1950s, China's first unmanned flight system "Beijing Fifth" was born at Beihang and achieved a "zero breakthrough" in the history of Chinese drone. Faced with the difficult situation of "no information, no experience and no equipment", BUK faculty members and students made tens of thousands of parts in unmanned aircraft control systems in school workshops. From July 1958 to February 1959, "Beijing V" successfully completed the three-phase flight test.

70s of last century, China's earliest successful development of aerial drone photographic reconnaissance aircraft "No reconnaissance - Five" was born in Beihang, it is China's earliest equipped troops, so far the only drone to exit the war. Today, "No Reconnaissance - Five" is still in service and Beihang Airlines has thus become the only university in China that has developed UAVs into actual combat.

In the 21st century, the baton was handed over to the team of UAVs at Beihang University. They developed the UAVs that have the longest flight duration, the farthest flight range and the most comprehensive tactical and technical indicators in our army. After more than 10 years of arduous efforts, it has firstly broken through the key technologies of the UAV system for the large long-haul flights to Jin-wu and its team in China for the first time, and established a completely independent technical system for UAVs of the long-haul-time UAVs in China.

Nowadays, the UAV team of UAC also aims at the international cutting-edge technology trends and conducts research work on new concepts of UAV design, intelligent sensing and autonomous flight control, and new energy sources. In recent years, they have published over 300 key academic papers and applied for more than 200 national patents.

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