China has made a major breakthrough in drone warfare, surpassing the level of the United States. Autonomous repair is the key technology of UAV swarm strike, autonomous hunting is only the basic skill of UAV warfare, can the US Navy deal with this threat?
Drones have become an important force in modern warfare, especially in the Russian-Ukrainian war, drones have demonstrated their superiority on future battlefields, and China has been at the forefront of drone research and development, and has even designed a plan to attack US aircraft carriers with drone swarms.
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks not so long ago announced a new project of the "Replicator" UAV at the American Defense Industry Association, with the aim of massively deploying unmanned combat systems in a short time and catching up with China within two years. The United States is feeling the pressure from China, mainly because China's National University of Defense Technology has pioneered the development of a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles with "self-healing" capabilities.
This "self-healing" capability means that in the process of performing the mission, even if it is intercepted by the enemy's air defense system, the drone swarm can quickly recover the damage through the way of self-organizing networking, using sensors and intelligent algorithms, so as to ensure that the drone swarm maintains its combat capability. This "self-healing" also allows drone swarms to achieve "autonomous hunting", look for enemy defense loopholes, avoid enemy firepower dense areas, and strike at the enemy's weak links.
The "self-healing" and "autonomous hunting" UAV swarm system launched by the National Defense University of Science and Technology shows the advanced nature of China's UAV strike technology, which not only has the functions of automatic avoidance of swarms and track correction, but also allows UAV swarms to move closer to "human thinking".
The actual combat experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war shows that cheap, quantity, low speed and low high are also an effective development idea.
There is a law in the field of development, if the speed and altitude of a ** are reduced, then the range and weight of the warhead will be multiplied, and the cost will be significantly reduced.
Iran's "small motorcycle" suicide drone is designed based on this idea, as long as speed is not pursued, then the "small motorcycle" can carry a 50-kilogram warhead to fly 1000 kilometers. Add to this a cheap satellite guidance module and it becomes a low-cost cruise missile. Can be used in large quantities.
We can imagine that if we create an ultra-low-cost cruise missile similar to a "small motorcycle", equipped with a powerful warhead, and use a cheap uncooled passive infrared image guidance head, we do not need the high-speed and sea-skimming penetration capabilities like high-performance anti-ship missiles, what is the maximum flight speed, the sea-skimming altitude of several meters, and the complex ballistic planning, all of which are not needed, and we only rely on numbers to win.
Technology has brought new modes of warfare and changed the rules of the battlefield. Like AI face recognition and drone swarm technology, they all bring more possibilities. For example, AI target identification, battlefield reconnaissance and intelligence collection have improved the accuracy of intelligence analysis and judgment. The coordinated operation of unmanned systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned boats can achieve scattered reconnaissance, strike, and support tasks, and improve combat effectiveness.
Drone swarms could be important in future warfare**. In future wars, there may be a scene of large-scale confrontation between drone swarms, and the integration of information and firepower. The swarm of stealth drones is covered like a black cloud, and it will be difficult for enemy ground or sea targets to escape.
Through "self-healing" and "autonomous hunting" technology, a set of advanced systems can control hundreds or thousands of UAVs to carry out swarm operations, densely packed, and launch attacks on the enemy, and each UAV has "autonomous consciousness" and "collective consciousness", and can cooperate to carry out "autonomous hunting" on the target.
Using this swarm-style ** to launch 1,000 missiles into the sea and attack a US aircraft carrier, you can block all the air defense and anti-missile channels of the US aircraft carrier battle group, consume all the air defense ammunition of the US ship, easily sink all the enemy's large sea targets within more than 1,000 kilometers, and even destroy the entire fleet in one fell swoop.
This is the real saturation blow, and if one time is not enough, then do it again.