Chinese MALE, HALE (and rotary, small, suicide) UAV/UCAV thread

tphuang

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WZ-10 probably is designed a specific show of EW warfare nearby. It still uses turbojet engine and is limited in size & range. It's probably low cost

Whatever they have designed for naval operation probably needs greater range and just be larger
 

by78

General
A confirmation of cooperative engagement between UAVs and attack helicopters. Basically, the tasks of identifying and illuminating targets are delegated to UAVs, with attack helicopters serving as bomb trucks by firing missiles at the targets. This reduces the workload of attack helicopter pilots as well as reducing exposure to enemy fire.

52890249501_b2cfcac88c_h.jpg
 

ACuriousPLAFan

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A confirmation of cooperative engagement between UAVs and attack helicopters. Basically, the tasks of identifying and illuminating targets are delegated to UAVs, with attack helicopters serving as bomb trucks by firing missiles at the targets. This reduces the workload of attack helicopter pilots as well as reducing exposure to enemy fire.

52890249501_b2cfcac88c_h.jpg
Interesting cooperation between manned and unmanned units for close air support (CAS) of ground troops achieved.

Though, the presence of SHORADs and the proliferation of MANPADS will make the battlefield ever more hostile towards low, slow-flying aerial vehicles than ever before.

To counter that, it will become even better if and when the manned element onboard attack helicopters can be eliminated too. Just let the robots do the killing and dying while humans hunker down and stay safe from the active battlefields.

However, concerns regarding enemy EW efforts will have to be addressed and countered too before unmanned attack helicopters can supplement, replace manned attack helicopters and become an effective CAS platform for allied troops on the battlefield.
 
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ACuriousPLAFan

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The pursuit of integrating fixed wing UAVs onto LHDs like 075 or more likely 076, as well as large deck carriers, is of course something that's going to happen.

But there's no reason to think specifically it has to be a GJ-1/2/11 variant or a WZ-10 variant (though we know that it seems a WZ-10 variant seems to be developed for CATOBAR, but whether that is for operational purposes or not).

There are going to be a whole variety of medium and high end fixed wing UAVs for naval applications and linking it with existing types probably isn't the best way to think about it long term.
Of course, and much thanks for your heads-up.

Though, my post is mainly discussing regarding different types of special roles (AEW, ASW, EW, ELINT, SIGINT etc) that UCAVs that are to be/in the process of adaptation for flat-deck use will be handling/tasked with - Plus those that are being designed for use on Chinese CVs and LHDs from the ground up.

The specific UCAV models are listed for example purposes only.

Whatever they have designed for naval operation probably needs greater range and just be larger
Definitely, and I believe that won't be limited to flat-deck-based special role UCAVs either.

We'll most likely see UCAVs of all types and roles, both land-based and flat-deck-based, getting larger and faster as they get even more powerful, more resilient, more reliable, and equipped with superior autonomous plus role/mission executing capabilities than they are right now.

It will be massively intriguing to witness the development of these UCAVs in the coming years.
 
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Atomicfrog

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Any idea if and how viable can autonomous capabilities for unmanned systems be - in order to mitigate and/or eliminate this drawback?
It's clearly hard to define, AI will help a lot if it's done well but still a lot of road to cover. I don't think it will be an easy task to make unmanned and manned system working together in an hostile environment.

Even autonomous system that follow a define and clear objectives can be deceived. We can take for example the reliability of navigation that is still a problem because of GPS jamming that we see occuring in Ukraine. For high end system like fullsize unmanned fighters or helicopters, navigation system will need to rely on GPS but also probably on inertial and lidar mapping for long range mission. So objective data need to be rock solid for an AI to be able to choose. AI will be as good as the data it can access.

Communication could be jammed between control aircraft and UCAV too. We see that communication systems between aircrafts are not that easy even in perfect situation. For example in the US they finally sorted some of the problem for datalink between F-22 and F-35 with using a third aircraft making translation.

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Imagine that scenario in a war situation...and now they are upgrading the datalink and F-22 got kicked out of the upgrade.

These kind of problems need to be sorted out. With a lot of systems in China coming to fruition in a short time, it could help because they have probably more in common than systems with decade old separation. But still, i'm pretty sure that this coming in fruition is also based on a fast evolution of all subsystems. Commonality have also his drawback... EW would be way easier against a common system than multiple.
 

dingyibvs

Junior Member
Could this be mitigated by a LOS communications system? Particularly for UAVs in. CAS role, by definition they'd be fairly close to ground units. Some sort of very narrow directional EM T/R system could render jamming/hacking ineffective.
 
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