China’s drone carrier is only the latest advance in unmanned combat

(Originally published May 16 in “What in the World“) In a sign of where warfare is heading, China is reportedly building a warship for unmanned aircraft—the world’s first dedicated drone carrier.

As the U.S. experiments with supporting its fighter pilots with swarms of drone “wingmen,” China apparently aims to expand its blue-water force projection by creating a platform much smaller than a conventional aircraft carrier designed to deliver and launch only unmanned aerial vehicles. Other navies are integrating drones and drone swarms into their naval operations and drones are already used aboard U.S. Navy warships. But only Iran and Turkey are known to be building drone-only carriers.

China’s drone carrier was launched in December 2022 but only recently discovered by satellite sleuths berthed at a shipyard well up the Yangzi river from Shanghai.

Cheap, jury-rigged drones have become the AK-47s of modern combat. Ukrainian forces have been modifying commercial Chinese-made drones to use against Russian invaders, while also developing their own, long-range drones to launch attacks deep inside Russian territory. Russian forces have used cheap, Chinese and Iranian drones to force Ukraine to expend its exponentially more expensive anti-missile ammunition, prompting warnings from Washington to go slow and resulting in more successful Russian aerial attacks. Depleting Ukraine’s Patriots and Nasams has also apparently allowed Russia to risk sending its Su-57 fighters into the skies over Ukraine to fire cruise missiles.

And Iran-backed Houthi rebels are using drones to harry commercial vessels in the Red Sea, forcing the U.S. and allied navies to knock them down using their own expensive missiles. The U.S. is responding with a $1 billion program to build Replicator drone swarms.

But efforts by the U.S. Navy and Air Force to modernize their arsenals with unmanned systems face opposition from the Pentagon and Congress, which routinely oppose retiring older vessels and warplanes to fund newer weapons systems. Congress views any decrease in the surface navy as a setback, and bigger, older ships typically support more jobs in local constituencies than cheaper, newer ones. The defense industry and its army of lobbyists, moreover, tends to favor larger equipment with bigger price tags and fatter margins.