China’s Combat Drones Could Become Deadly Air Superiority Fighters with New AI

Chinese state media outlet Global Times has reported that combat drones integrating advanced artificial intelligence could soon be deployed - citing military experts. Li Yidong, the chief designer of China’s Wing Loong drone series, stated regarding this potential development: “AI is a huge field with many basic technologies, which are developing. We are doing all sorts of work to apply these technologies on drones, and also piloted aircraft... We want [drones] to fly intelligently, have smart situational awareness, capable of identifying targets and automatically make some decisions.” All known drones in service today are remotely piloted, often from sites thousands of miles away, and while this avoids risking the lives of their pilots it also leaves them potentially vulnerable to having signals jammed. The commandeering of a high end platform, the U.S. RQ-170 stealth drone, by Iran's armed forces in 2011, demonstrated the vulnerabilities of such remotely piloted aircraft. Integrating artificial intelligence onto drones could allow them to deploy independently without a connection to ground control. Drones would, according to the experts cited in the Global Times report, be able to fly on their own, identify potential targets and make combat decisions.

China has emerged as a world leader in drone technologies, with the Wing Loong program representing only the lighter end of its fleet. A number of platforms with advanced radar evading capabilities have also emerged such as the Sharp Sword - as has a highly ambitious heavy platform which is speculated to be a next generation fighter. The design of this new Chinese platform, known as the Dark Sword, was unveiled in 2018 and is expected to integrate AI systems and be specialised in air to air combat. 2018 saw the first time a drone was successfully tested downing an aerial target, with an MQ-9 Reaper drone specially equipped for this role in the United States, but air to air combat in coming years may increasingly be dominated by such aircraft. Pilotless aircraft will not only save internal space, but will also be able to process data faster and perform manoeuvres at over 9g - which would incapacitate a human pilot.