Drone warfare will play a large part during a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but it will not go the way that people think - a 🧵
1/ Let's start off with a single statistic: the world's largest manufacturer of consumer drones is DJI, accounting for 76% of all purchases.
2/ DJI drones have been spotted in Ukraine, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, and pretty much anywhere that has seen fighting in the 21st century
3/ Most commonly, these drones serve as a cheap way to provide recon, adjust artillery fires, and sometimes even used as ad-hoc indirect fire support against fixed positions and exposed infantry/armor
4/ However, what people are conveniently ignoring is that DJI is a Chinese company, and has been accused of building backdoors into the drones - an accusation that they've denied.
reuters.com/world/china/ch…
5/ DJI, however, does offer an SDK as well as cloud storage options for its end users. While it does not mean that DJI currently stores/passes information on its servers, the ability exists for the company should a situation arise that demands it.
6/ In a Taiwan invasion scenario, it's likely that DJI will be required to cooperate with the PLA. This means that Taiwanese civilian drone operators attempting to fly DJI drones may have their location data exposed
7/ In other words, don't expect to see a million consumer drones swarming the invading PLA forces. Instead, it's more likely to see a million target data passed along to the PLA as "valid civil-military targets" in the 2nd wave of a Joint Firepower Strike.
8/ But let's move away from the civilian drones and into the military drones themselves, which are larger, feature more robust communication hardware, and have longer endurance/loiter time. Since 2010, China has embarked on an impressive drone-building effort on all fronts.
9/ Some examples are copies of Predator (Wing Loong II), Switchblade (FH-901), Bayraktar (Tengden TB-001), and Harop (ASN-301) - fulfilling functions as recon, swarm, anti-radiation, basic strike, & loitering munition. There are FAR more types/config that others have covered
10/ There are also more exotic drones that are clearly tech demonstrators - like this one @LiaWong__ mentioned earlier this month that can deploy a robot dog.
@LiaWong__ 11/ You even get funny conversions periodically of land-based vehicles like this Type 59 that had been converted a few years back - most likely as a moving target rather than an actual fighting vehicle.
@LiaWong__ 12/ The conversions most worthy of attention are the converted fighters. They can double as either moving targets, or more sinisterly, as a cheap cruise missile. Below is a converted J-6 fighter.
@LiaWong__ 13/ In the latter role, converted drones become a very credible threat for the simple fact that they can also act as radar bait, requiring a response that would've otherwise been used elsewhere
@LiaWong__ 14/ A converted drone will still show up on radar with characteristics matching that of a strike aircraft, will still require defenders to identify, process, and track. Meanwhile, defending radars must continue emitting to accomplish this...
15/ These emissions are susceptible to be ingested, parsed, and passed along by PLA ELINT drones to PLA C2 aircrafts and installations, where the data will be transformed into strike packages for PLA anti-radiation missiles.
16/ These converted drones also cannot be outright ignored. A single J-6 loaded with 1800kg of fuel and 250kg of explosives is a hefty strike package that approaches the conventional 480kg warhead of a Tomahawk missile
17/ In the Nagorno-Karabakh flareup in 2020, Azerbaijan converted An-2s into drones for this express purpose. The aging aircraft was used as bait (albeit partially converted) to expose Armenian AA radars for destruction.
panarmenian.net/eng/news/29599…
18/ In other words, the first wave of the Joint Firepower Strike will incorporate a large unmanned component in recon, intelligence, as well as kinetic strikes. These unmanned assets force SAM operators into an unpalatable choice:
19/ Illuminate fully and risk attracting an anti-radiation missile, illuminate partially and decrease detection ability, do not illuminate and render their SAM batteries useless and open to being struck by munitions that they otherwise might've stopped
20/ In the 3rd option, the SAM battery will have been rendered de facto ineffective. Without targeting data, SAM batteries present no threat whatsoever to aircrafts flying overhead. With each JFS wave, the airspace over Taiwan will become less permissive for ground based radars
21/ Meanwhile, PLA drone swarms themselves will be launched towards Taiwan - a capability that they've fielded in both civilian and military capacities: https://t.co/dnzxNObWvR
youtube.com/watch?v=scTe1L…
youtube.com/watch?v=VvemT9…
23/ In the immediate aftermath of the Pelosi Taiwan visit in 2022, Chinese civilians flew multiple DJI drones over Kinmen to harass ROC outposts. This behavior will be actively encouraged once conflict breaks out
24/ To tie things back to civilian drones dropping munitions directly on targets, the PLA has a number of Blowfish A2 drones that accomplishes the same with far more munitions.
25/ The PLA has also expressed their desire to network their WIP low-observable drones (AVIC 601-S) in a loyal wingman configuration to support future combat air ops, but this is not something they currently field or have been observed of fielding
26/ Taken altogether, it will not be Taiwan using a swarm of drones to defend itself like Ukraine against Russia, but the other way around in decreasing successive sophistication while the rest of the PLA slowly shifts attention to inbound USN+allied forces further east. End 🧵
Addendum: PLA demonstration of drone swarm from the 73rd Group Army of the Eastern Theater Command
Addendum 2: a closer look from PLA documentations of networking manned fighters with supporting drones.
