Source: World Wide Web

¡°Despite the efforts of the U.S. military to accelerate the pace, the U.S. still faces (drone) manufacturing difficulties, and it is difficult to compare with the manufacturing capacity and output of China and other countries,¡± CNN said on September 15 local time, citing analysts and industry leaders.

An American soldier is controlling a drone (data map/US media)

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict inspired a series of rapid changes in the field of drone combat, so that the United States, which has "one of the most advanced military and defense industrial systems" in the world, finds itself lagging behind. The report mentioned that most U.S. soldiers lack expertise in using unmanned systems, and the United States is good at manufacturing large-scale expensive weapons such as fighters, tanks, but in the ability to quickly produce small, cheap systems such as unmanned aircraft, is not prepared in many ways.

According to the report, Chinese enterprises have dominated the field of consumer drones, while American first-person perspective (FPV) drone manufacturers still rely on contracts from the US Department of Defense, and these contracts have not yet involved large-scale procurement. CNN mentioned that the U.S. Department of Defense proposed the "Replicator" plan in 2023, aiming to promote the mass production of cheap systems for the U.S. military, but its goal is only to produce 3,000 drones within two years.

CNN continued that China has produced tens of millions of small drones every year, which worries the United States. "We have to be prepared for that," said Samuel Bendett, a consultant at the U.S. Center for Naval Analysis. "We have to understand the situation. For now, this is an irreversible technological change".

On July 10, the Pentagon announced a massive change aimed at accelerating the process of deploying small drones (including armed drones) across the army, equipping the troops with thousands of drones. The U.S. War Zone website said that this new policy was a ¡°major shift¡± for the U.S. Army, since the U.S. Army¡¯s slow progress on widespread deploying drones. But the website also commented that the U.S. Army¡¯s implementation of the new policy and the impact of related policies are still to be observed. Despite a number of initiatives, the U.S. Army is still lagging behind in terms of large-scale deploying of drone systems, especially the grassroots forces. The results of observations on the Ukrainian battlefield further high

Extended reading

China's aircraft production drone debut: US CCA has encountered a real opponent

(Author of Observer Network Columns)

At the 93rd military parade, China for the first time publicly demonstrated two types of airborne drones comparable to medium-sized fighter jets.

One of the new aircrafts uses a Mitsubishi-shaped main wing, cancelled vertical, and underneath the head has a photoelectric targeting system similar to the J-20, and both sides of the airway also use the mature DSI (no attachment layer separator) design on the J10C. The other uses the trendy Lambda wing, with a CARET airway similar to the F-22.

China has exhibited at least four unmanned fighter jets

From the appearance alone, it can be seen that they are not experimental modelling, but a real combat platform built according to the high standards of the six-generation aircraft. The two drones have exceeded the volume of the "Dragon", and are close to the J-10, speculating that the maximum take-off weight is 10 tons. In other words, China directly made the aircraft to the level of medium-sized fighter.

It should be emphasized that the two aircraft are too high-end, and the United States has not yet matched the model. The US CCA (no-man synchronous fighter project) corresponds to the relatively low-end unmanned aircraft in front of the two aircraft in the parade.

The body size of China's aircraft drone (after) is much larger than that of the unmanned drone (before).

China unmanned fighter aircraft vs US CCA

In comparison with satellite photos, the Mitsubishi main wing + DSI inlet aircraft drone captain is more than 11 meters, the wing extension is close to 15 meters, and the wing area is estimated to be about 50-60 square meters. This volume is significantly larger than the "Dragon" (FC-1), and almost belongs to the same grade as the J-10. If calculated in weight, its maximum take-off weight is approximately 10 tons, rather than a few tons of small drones. This means that it can not only carry air / ground ammunition, but also have long range and continuous combat capabilities.

On the power system, such a weight is actually more suitable to be driven by a large thrust engine. For example, with the Turbine-10 series, the accelerated thrust can reach 120 thousand boats or more, and can fully meet the needs of the 12-ton platform than the weighing weight. This has a significant difference from the RD-93 (about 90 thousand boats) used by the "Dragon", which also explains why the drone is closer to the Z-10 in volume and mission settings than the lightweight fighter. More notably, the new generation of the large thrust engine Turbine-15 has tried to destroy 20A, which leaves room for subsequent unmanned aircraft performance improvements.

The U.S. YFQ-44A is very small, limiting operational performance.

Let's look at the situation of CCA in the United States. The "Cooperative Combat Aircraft" program being promoted by the U.S. Air Force essentially wants to equip manned aircraft with a batch of cheap "consumable wingmen." Taking the YFQ-44A as an example, this drone has a length of only 6.1 meters, a wingspan of 5.2 meters, and a maximum take-off weight of only 2.2 tons. It uses a Williams FJ44-4M turbofan engine with a thrust of about 18 kN. This engine is widely used in business jets, and its size and performance are completely different from those of fighter engines.

What does this difference mean? If we compare China's air superiority drone to an unmanned J-10, then the American CCA is more like a small unmanned target drone capable of carrying missiles. The former can fly to the front line, fight independently, or fight side by side with manned aircraft, and play a real air superiority role in air combat; The latter has no independent combat capabilities, but is more used as an "ammunition truck" or a "decoy platform" to make up for the lack of single-machine performance with quantity.

In terms of design concept, the U.S. CCA pursues "low cost and consumability". Its mission is to take risks for manned aircraft and make the expensive F-47 less risky. Therefore, the United States doesn't care whether it can travel at supersonic speeds or fight. It only requires that it can mount a few missiles and be commanded and used remotely. This Chinese drone obviously does not follow this logic. Its shape is completely in line with the idea of the sixth-generation aircraft: the vertical tail is cancelled to reduce radar reflection, the diamond-shaped main wing improves supersonic performance, and the optoelectronic aiming system (EOTS) is loaded under the nose to enhance independent combat capabilities. In other words, China is not building a cannon fodder "loyal wingman", but an unmanned combat aircraft that can truly fight air combat.

Note that there are EOTS similar to the J-20 under the nose

The two words "aircraft" need to hit the blackboard emphasis, China has never come to say that the literal meaning is to seize aircraft control, defeat and clean up enemy air targets, whether it is F-22 or F-35 or F-47. This means that the aircraft not only needs strong detection capabilities, independent combat capabilities, but also super-strong maneuverability and even supersonic cruise capabilities.

This gap, to use a simple metaphor, is like a go-kart and an F1 car. CCA's in the US are cheap go-karts, which can be plenty of and enough to run on the track, but can't compete with a professional racing car by any means. China's air-superior drone is a standard racing idea. It does not pursue low-cost consumption, but emphasizes high performance, systematization and independent combat. Once the two routes are in the spotlight, the difference will be very intuitive.

Two unmanned body types are smaller, all use machine back into the airway, all have verticals.

Why the US can only do CCA, while China can do unmanned fighters

Many will ask: Isn¡¯t the United States the world¡¯s strongest country in aviation technology? why is it conservative in the field of unmanned fighters, launching only small, low-cost CCA?

The first is the contradiction between cost and budget. The U.S. Air Force already has a large number of expensive equipment: F-35 fighter jets, B-21 stealth bombers, and F-47 sixth-generation aircraft, each of which is a project worth tens of billions of dollars. In this context, Congress's request for the Air Force is to "control the budget", especially that there can be no longer long-term overspending like the F-35. Therefore, the positioning of CCA is depressed from the beginning-it must be a low-cost product that can be consumed in large quantities, and the unit price should be between several million and tens of millions of dollars. In this case, it cannot be designed as a drone with a volume close to that of a medium-sized fighter, but can only be deployed within the framework of "small and cheap".

The United States¡¯ advantages in the field of drones are more reflected in intelligence reconnaissance and low-intensity operations, such as the platform ¡°Predator¡± ¡°Death God¡±. But to be a drone fighter that can go side by side with human aircraft requires a completely different technology accumulation: hidden air dynamics layout, intelligent flight control systems, human-grade power and aerospace, which have not been fully developed in the United States over the past two decades. The U.S. Air Force has tried the X-47B project, technically not lagging behind, but because of the adjustment of funds and strategic direction, was forced to stop. This led to the United States not to form a continuous iteration in this direction, but to re-taste from ¡°minimisation¡±.

Look at China. China's aviation industry has entered a "high-strength internal volume" state in the last decade. The concentrated debut of the J-20, J-20, J-20, J-35, these new models, behind the mature and efficient complete industrial chain. Engine, radar, hidden air, composite materials, are almost in parallel. More importantly, China's research and development system allows many models to compete simultaneously, parallel testing, and rapid iteration for the successful model to provide experience. In this environment, the launch of a mass equivalent to J-10 aircraft, it appears to be water to canal.

There is another factor that cannot be ignored: strategic pressure. The imaginary enemy faced by the U.S. Air Force is multi-line deployment worldwide, and more consideration is given to how to maintain numerical advantage within a limited budget; The main challenge facing China is to compete head-on with the air power of the United States and Japan in the Western Pacific region, which means that there must be drones that can truly fight air combat. There can be low-end loyal wingmen, but without high-end unmanned air superiority fighters, China's air force system will still be difficult to reverse and form an absolute advantage, lacking depth and thickness.

Therefore, driven by strategic needs, China is more willing to invest resources to push drones directly to the high-end fighter level. It is necessary to emphasize that the low-end is the low-end in a relative sense, even China's so-called low-end CCA, for other countries is also difficult to expect its backward presence - such as China's low-end J-10 hit the French high-end "wind".

Combined, the U.S. CCA and China's drone fighters, in fact, reflect two completely different realities: the U.S. is the budget and industrial chain elbow, can only choose the low-cost, cannon-grey direction; China under the joint role of strategic pressure and industrial conditions, both hands must hold both hands to hard, both choosing high-performance routes, and have a cheap tube-filled pulse model.

20th Army 9th Army

From low-end to high-end flagship.

This parade not only showed a Mitsubishi wing-made drone, but also showed different degrees of drones: small, vertical loyal crawlers, medium-sized wing attack-11, and this size of the Canberra-10 high-end aerial drone. This combination has clearly conveyed China's idea: low-end drones can be stacked in quantity, used for consumption and support; high-end drones are as "unmanned fighters", directly undertaken aircraft tasks. Strong combination, can constitute a thick and sharp unmanned combat system.

In contrast to the United States, the CCA project is still wandering in the debate. In the end, whether to do one-time consumer goods, or to do reusable high-end drones, the U.S. Air Force itself has no unified answer. The YFQ-42, YFQ-44 test flight, only indicates that the lightweight loyalty drone is a direction, but the distance is still very long to truly form as a combat force. More troubling, the U.S. Air Force's budget is dragged by six generations of drones and B-21, in a short period of time there is no room to develop a large-powered drone fighter at the same time.

What does that mean? It means that in the next five to ten years, the gap between China and the United States in unmanned air superiority fighter jets may be further widened. The United States may be able to push the CCA small loyal wingman into the army soon, but it is only a "cannon fodder machine" after all. China, on the other hand, has completed its layout at a higher level-on the one hand, there are low-end "loyal wingmen", and on the other hand, there are high-end flagship air-dominant unmanned sixth-generation aircraft, forming a complete pedigree from low to high. Behind this is not only the technological gap, but also the difference in strategic choices. The CCA in the United States emphasizes "cost-effectiveness" and tries to maintain consumption with cheap drones; China's air-superior drones emphasize "performance advantages" and strive to establish overwhelming advantages in frontal air combat. When these two routes collide, who is better equipped for future high-intensity warfare? The answer is actually very clear.