China's Next Generation Unmanned Assassins

China has been steadily pushing ahead in its development of stealthy, unmanned deep penetration aircraft in recent years.

- JR Ng

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is beginning to reap the harvest of a decades-long investment into its unmanned aircraft research and development (R&D) sector, with a host of new and emerging unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) being showcased in recent years.

Indeed, Chinese unmanned aircraft R&D capabilities have come a long way since the late 1950s, when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) delegated the development of such systems to university aeronautical departments, which eventually spawned a vast industry that has gone from meeting domestic commercial and military requirements to serving a growing customer base overseas.

While these have often been overshadowed by other advanced military programmes and many of these UCAVs have yet to enter known service and will likely remain as paper designs or R&D testbeds, there is ample evidence that the technologies derived from these efforts will go on to inform even more sophisticated future designs as the PLA’s continued transformation drives further growth of advanced airborne capabilities over the coming decade.

Dark Sword and Sharp Sword

In June 2018, an image of a full-scale technology demonstrator of the secretive An Jian (Dark Sword) UCAV surfaced on Chinese news portals and social media. The undated photograph showed a large UCAV featuring an elongated, gunmetal-coloured airframe with canard surfaces and a ventral engine air intake that adopts a diverterless supersonic inlet (DSI) design. Saw-tooth edges can be seen on the air vehicle’s port side landing gear door.