China Speeding Into The Low-Cost Drone Swarm Lead

Future conflicts will likely become drone wars of attrition, with the Ukraine war illustrating the new-age warfare possibility. In an April 2023 article in the peer-reviewed Defense and Security Analysis journal , Marc DeVore states that the ongoing war has shown the virtues of low costs and expendability in drone warfare.

DeVore says that Russia lost at least 148 reusable drones and Ukraine 40 during the first nine months of the war, pointing out that the reasons for high drone losses are technical, as drone data links are susceptible to jamming. He says the weapons fly at lower and medium altitudes, also making them vulnerable to short-range air defenses.

He notes that both Russia and Ukraine have used drones for missions in densely defended zones, leading to a shift towards lower cost and more disposable platforms. For instance, he notes that Ukraine's Turkey-made Bayraktar TB-2 and Russian Forpost and Orion are respectively their most sophisticated drones.

Still, he says their vulnerability has limited their effectiveness against jamming and low-altitude air defense assets. As a result, he says both countries have increasingly turned to very low-cost or disposable drones, as the cost of shooting down these one-way attack weapons exceeds their value.

Cognizant of this battlefield lesson, the US has initiated programs to mass-produce drones for a high-tech war of attrition.

In September, Asia Times reported on the US Replicator program, which aims to field massive numbers of AI-driven autonomous drones to counter China's growing military capabilities. The program aims to rapidly advance the fielding of attritable autonomous platforms in air, land, and sea domains, with an aggressive 18 to 24-month deployment timeline.

The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit will oversee the project while working with defense and non-traditional tech companies. Advancements in artificial intelligence, mesh networks and grand networking capabilities will facilitate autonomous, decentralized functioning, offering quicker deployment closer to the tactical edge.

Furthermore, in February 2023, Asia Times reported on the US“Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms” (AMASS) project to develop autonomous drone swarms capable of being launched from sea, air and land to overwhelm enemy air defenses.

The project aims to develop the capability to launch and command thousands of autonomous drones, working together to destroy an enemy's defenses, including air defenses, artillery pieces, missile launchers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms.

The AMASS program is expected to focus specifically on deterring or defeating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The program explores using“swarm-of-swarms” to conduct military operations with low-cost drones with diverse sensors and kinetic and non-kinetic effectors in highly contested environments,

Still, the US faces significant challenges in scaling up its low-cost drone production. A CNBC report last month noted that the problem with producing small consumer drones such as quadcopters in the US is that the price goes up since material and labor costs are higher than in China.

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CNBC notes that many Western drone companies dropped out of the market in 2016 and 2017 due to being out-competed by China or because of bad business decisions. It also notes that making drones with parts solely sourced from the US is complicated, as the US does not have the factories to produce expendable military drones on such a massive scale. Nor does it have the secure supply chains needed to make sensitive components, the report said.

Future wars will be fought using drone swarms. Credit: C4ISRNET

China, on the other hand, is better-placed to ramp up low-cost drone production. China is currently already the world's largest exporter of armed military drones ; Shenzhen-based DJI commands 70% of the world's consumer drone market .

Asia Times reported in September on China's Sunflower-200 loitering munition, which is purportedly modeled after the Iranian Shahed-136, the weapon Russia is using in the ongoing Ukraine war that it has extensively modified to suit the specific battlefield conditions in the area. The drone was shown during the Army-2023 defense exhibition in Moscow.

Despite China having the capability to mass-produce the Sunflower-200 and improved versions for Russia, it has taken a cautious approach to its support for Moscow's war effort, balancing its interests to ensure an outcome favorable to its interests while avoiding Western sanctions.

While it is unlikely that the Sunflower-200 will soon appear in Russia's arsenal, China has sent dual-use drones to Russia cognizant they will be used for military purposes.

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