Chinese UAV/UCAV development

caudaceus said:

From recent Karabakh conflict, it seems that drone warfare plays a very significant role, as shown by Azeri MoD combat footage.
If I may ask how well is PLA drone warfare compared to Turkish military drone?

Click to expand...

Instead I'm wondering how good is PLA's anti-drone warfare. Can PLA anti-air assets take down high-flying drones such as the TB-2 and loitering munitions such as the IAI Heron? From what I'm seeing in this conflict countless Armenian Osas and even an S-300 has become TB-2 and loitering munition food. There's even a video out there where Armenian soldiers had to fire their AKs at enemy Orbiter minidrones. It just shows that Armenia is really lagging behind in their anti-drone warfare. As for really small drones such as the Orbiter minidrones how can you shoot them down? You can't shoot them with missiles and autocannons since they are no bigger than birds. Does the PLA know how to deal with them?

The Chinese are way ahead of the curve when it comes to anti-drone capabilities. They have a wide range of anti-drone handheld jammers and lasers, as well as more powerful and longer ranged fixed and mobile anti-drone lasers as well as very comprehensive air defences (S300s are good at shooting down manned aircraft at long range, but are not great against small targets close by, which is why you need SAMs of all ranges) covering missiles and AAA and point defence systems like the LD2000.

On top of that PLA Z10s and Z19s can also carry AAMs.

But perhaps China’s best defence against India’s imported drones would be its strong offensive capabilities. Drones need runways to take off any land, take those out and no more drones except for the really small and light ones maybe.

plawolf said:

The Chinese are way ahead of the curve when it comes to anti-drone capabilities. They have a wide range of anti-drone handheld jammers and lasers, as well as more powerful and longer ranged fixed and mobile anti-drone lasers as well as very comprehensive air defences (S300s are good at shooting down manned aircraft at long range, but are not great against small targets close by, which is why you need SAMs of all ranges) covering missiles and AAA and point defence systems like the LD2000.

On top of that PLA Z10s and Z19s can also carry AAMs.

But perhaps China’s best defence against India’s imported drones would be its strong offensive capabilities. Drones need runways to take off any land, take those out and no more drones except for the really small and light ones maybe.

Click to expand...

China’s best defense against Indian drones is that a lot of them that are actually used on the LAC and LOC are DJIs. They can just give Frank Wang a call and get all of them grounded via “technical glitch”.

tupolevtu144 said:

Instead I'm wondering how good is PLA's anti-drone warfare. Can PLA anti-air assets take down high-flying drones such as the TB-2 and loitering munitions such as the IAI Heron? From what I'm seeing in this conflict countless Armenian Osas and even an S-300 has become TB-2 and loitering munition food. There's even a video out there where Armenian soldiers had to fire their AKs at enemy Orbiter minidrones. It just shows that Armenia is really lagging behind in their anti-drone warfare. As for really small drones such as the Orbiter minidrones how can you shoot them down? You can't shoot them with missiles and autocannons since they are no bigger than birds. Does the PLA know how to deal with them?

Click to expand...

The footage from the Karabakh conflict is really incredible (and also reminds us that war is terrible).

I think this could really highlight to countries all over the world the usefulness of drones and the importance of countering them. It looked like Azerbaijan was scoring hit after hit on ground targets despite Armenia having quite a large arsenal of AAMs.

I wonder how effective China's drone jammers and short range AAM like HQ-17 will be against drones in a real conflict situation

China Post delivery.

by78 said:

China Post delivery.

Click to expand...

Neat example of duel use technology.

sndef888 said:

The footage from the Karabakh conflict is really incredible (and also reminds us that war is terrible).

I think this could really highlight to countries all over the world the usefulness of drones and the importance of countering them. It looked like Azerbaijan was scoring hit after hit on ground targets despite Armenia having quite a large arsenal of AAMs.

I wonder how effective China's drone jammers and short range AAM like HQ-17 will be against drones in a real conflict situation

Click to expand...

Yeah I agree. Ive been loosely following the karabakh conflict and the drone feeds from the Turkish TB-2.

Here is my general takeaways:

1) Even low end drones are difficult to shoot down when you don't have the right equipment. They are slow, but also very small. "Discount" Russian SAMs like OSa are completely useless against even low end drones like the TB-2 which don't fly very high or fast or far.

2) Element of surprise is important. Clearly Azerbaijan caught Armenia off guard with the drones. They were not prepared at all to counter them. This is similar to what happened in desert Storm with GPS.

3) Electronic Warfare and targeting optics in general are a major force multiplier. Traditional metrics like range and payload etc. are not useful when you can't hit your target or get shot down before you reach your target.

4) Defending a large area against drones is hard, it's difficult to sufficiently saturate an entire area with air defense systems.

China should work on ways of detecting and countering small drones like the TB-2

5) My thoughts on the future of drones, I think China should invest more in swarms of small drones which can loiter and fly long distances and carry one or two missiles each, rather than larger drones like the reaper or predator. Smaller drones are much more survivable and close to impossible to shoot down unlike large drones.

siegecrossbow said:

Chinese drones are on a whole other level.

Click to expand...

In terms of traditional metrics like range, payload, stealth etc. The TB-2 is pretty low end compared to something like the jet powered stealth CH-7. However, I do think this conflict has proven that small drones are pretty difficult to shoot down even for a decently sophisticated system like the S-300.

In my opinion, a swarm of small fast moving low flying drones can even be more deadly than one or two large stealth drones. It will be super difficult for even the most sophisticated Sam system to detect shoot down for example 100 micro drones flying as a loose swarm at less than one or two hundred feet above the ground at near Mach speed.

Same goes for ballistic missiles. THAAD or S-300 can probably do a decent job of shooting down a ballistic missile, but they would be completely useless against micro done swarms.

by78 said:

An armed UAV from the 75th Group Army's special forces brigade.

Click to expand...

Now that's more like it. I'm getting tired of seeing just surveillance drones.