China copying U.S. drone designs

Posted By Joshua Keating Tuesday, August 11, 2009 - 6:02 PM Share

Defense News's Wendell Minnick reports that designs on display at the recent Zhuhai Airshow indicate that China has likely been copying designs of U.S. unmanned arial vehicles:

China appears to be modeling three UAVs on the same V-tail configuration of the U.S.-made RQ-4 Global Hawk: the Chengdu Aircraft Corp.'s Xianglong (Sour Dragon) UAV and Yilong UAV, and the Guizhou Aviation Industry Group's WZ-2000 UAV.

One mystery is why the plethora of UAV models on display at Zhuhai do not go into production, said Andrei Chang, a Chinese military analyst with the Kanwa Information Center in Toronto. China is having difficulty mastering the technical complexity of operating UAVs in real time, he said.

"The companies displaying these are probably trying to elicit foreign investment and probably do not have an actual prototype," Chang said.

China also conducted a massive war game this week as part of a campaign to improve its "long-distance mobility" using new high-speed rail networks to move troops and equipment. Eyebrows were raised in New Delhi. 

EXPLORE:CHINA, MILITARY
 

NYGDAN

9:54 PM ET

August 11, 2009

drones

http://bit.ly/FyEdV Bit of any aside, the thread there discusses unofficial/unknown drone sightings, landing and operating from US bases in Afghanistan (linking it apparently to older "canceled" projects called Darkstar OR DesertProwler)

Also, really, high speed rail lines to move troops and equipment to the Indian Front, really? Trains? Won't these things simply be taken out in a first strike? Or vapourized AFTER being unloaded in an all out nuclear attack??? I mean, China going to full blown war with India, and world doesn't collapse into Global Thermo-Nuclear War???

 

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