China’s cheaper armed drones now flying across Middle eastern battlefields, covering a wide range of roles from reconnaissance to targeted killings. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. UAVs are a component…
China’s cheaper armed drones now flying across Middle eastern battlefields, covering a wide range of roles from reconnaissance to targeted killings.
Background
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS); which include a UAV, a ground-based controller, and a system of communications between the two. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator or autonomously by onboard computers.
Compared to manned aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too “dull, dirty or dangerous” for humans. While they originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications, such as policing, peacekeeping,and surveillance, product deliveries, aerial photography, agriculture, smuggling,and drone racing. Civilian UAVs now vastly outnumber military UAVs, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015, so they can be seen as an early commercial application of autonomous things, to be followed by the autonomous car and home robots.
For close to 20 years, the US has been the undisputed leader in the development, production and deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles in various terrains across the world.
U.S. drones were first used in Yemen to kill suspected al-Qaida militants in 2002.
Analysis
Across the Middle East, countries locked out of purchasing U.S.-made drones due to rules over excessive civilian casualties are being wooed by Chinese arms dealers, the world’s main distributor of armed drones.
“The Chinese product now doesn’t lack technology, it only lacks market share,” said Song Zhongping, a Chinese military analyst and former lecturer at the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force University of Engineering. “And the United States restricting its arms exports is precisely what gives China a great opportunity.”
The sales are helping expand Chinese influence across a region vital to American security interests.
“It’s a hedging strategy, and the Chinese will look to benefit from that,” said Douglas Barrie, a specialist on air power at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “I think the Chinese are far less liable to be swayed by concerns over civilian casualties.”
At the start of the year, a satellite passing over southern Saudi Arabia photographed U.S.-made surveillance drones at an airfield, alongside Chinese-manufactured armed ones.
According to the Center for the Study of the Drone at New York’s Bard College, that was the first documented example of the two drone systems being used in the war in Yemen. The country has emerged as a “sort of a testing ground for these strike-capable drones,” said Dan Gettinger, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone. “There’s a rapid turnaround from delivery to deployment.”
One of the biggest Chinese exports is the Cai-Hong (Rainbow) series made by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), the largest contractor for the Chinese space program.
The company’s CH-4 and CH-5 models are on a par with San Diego-based General Atomics’ Predator and Reaper drones — and much cheaper. Independent analysts say the Chinese models lag behind their American counterparts but the technology is good enough to justify the price tag, which might be half or less.
However, cutting-edge U.S. models like Boeing Co.’s Stingray, introduced this year for the U.S. Navy, still hold a technological advantage.
Since 2014, China has sold more than 30 CH-4s to countries including Saudi Arabia and Iraq in deals worth over $700 million, according to CASC. Ten countries are currently in negotiations to purchase the CH-4.
Last year, China sold to the United Arab Emirates the Wing Loong II, an armed unmanned aerial vehicle roughly equivalent to the American MQ-9 Reaper.
Assessment
Our assessment is that China is leveraging its massive manufacturing industry to produce low-cost, high quality military hardware and push US companies out of key global markets. US Companies have been dominating the Drone markets for close to two decades and China’s growing manufacturing capabilities has enabled it to compete with the industry leader. We believe that the next few years will see China incorporating cutting-edge technology in its drone fleets, similar to the systems being used in American-made unmanned systems. We also feel that Chinese drones may be unreliable considering their limited combat experience.
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