“Remote” warfare: a drone ship, a mix between research and Chinese military instrument

Officially the “Zhuhaiyun” is a research ship, but her military streak is evident. This drone ship revealed by China is likely unique and represents a shift in the growing importance of unmanned aircraft for modern warfare.

Chinese state media reported in late May of the launch of the ship, heralded as a flagship for maritime research, and the media noted that It will be operational by the end of this year.

The ship will carry an unknown number of aerial, marine and underwater drones.

The “Zhuhaiyun” it is 88.5 meters long and can reach 18 knots (33 km / h). Chen Dake, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the boat’s own laboratory, described it to the China Daily as a “breakthrough innovation.”

According to the scientist, “the ship is not only an unprecedented precision instrument within the confines of maritime science, but it is also a platform for the prevention and management of maritime disasters, for the precise mapping of the seabed (…) and for rescue at the sea “.

suspicious

But it seems unlikely that this ship is for scientific use only.

The carrier is a tool that it can be used to serve Chinese interests in the Indo-Pacific region, a further step in the military use of drones, which have been deployed from Afghanistan to Libya, and are currently in combat in Ukraine, where they show their importance in modern wars.

China and the United States are at the forefront of this race, ahead of other players such as Israel and Turkey, which have managed to carve out a space in this market as well.

But Beijing’s presentation of this ship is somewhat cryptic.

“There is a lack of empirical data to suggest that the Chinese state can indeed use this ship in an integrated way “during a conflict, said Paul Lushenko, US lieutenant colonel and Cornell University researcher.

The expert told AFP that “it is the first development of its kind, but other navies in the world, including the United States, are working in the possibility of remote warfare in the marine domain.

Such a drone vector, especially if it can be replicated, could allow China to block access to a certain area.

Utility

China multiplies territorial disputes with its neighbors e it may in the future settle in a territory without deploying troops.

One of the key elements for the vector is autonomy of movement.

“It’s a bit of an analogy with a school of fish: shapes are created in the water that are not an individual decision of any of the fish, but rather the result of their collective intelligenceJean-Marc Rickly, director of global and emerging risks at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCPS), told AFP.

“The ultimate goal is to create something that has collective intelligence capabilities,” he said.

There are currently semi-autonomous devices, which are programmable. But last month, Zhejiang University released a video showing ten drones crossing a bamboo forest.

“They come to understand the environment in which they find themselves, to identify obstacles, to communicate to make a topography of the places and overcome obstacles”, explained the researcher.

All the great armies of the world work on projects of this type, with the aim of saturating a space, be it air, sea or submarine, with cheap and replaceable items indefinitely, as opposed to very sophisticated devices driven by people.

In 2020, the Rand Corporation think tank estimated the computing power of a military drone to be less than that of a smartphone. This corps specified that a unit of 900 soldiers could launch and retrieve 300 drones every six hoursadding 1,200 departures a day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“The idea is saturation, to finally exhaust the available arsenal of interceptor missiles against the enemy,” he wrote.

AFP agency

PB