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China’s military
ChinaMilitary

Chinese military researchers zero in on AI-driven navy, space combat to ‘win future wars’

  • Study Times, a key Communist Party paper, publishes series by PLA experts on emerging weapons technology to take strategic high ground
  • Monday’s articles come as Xi Jinping underlines need to ‘boldly innovate’ during country’s ‘military struggle’

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Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed innovation and ‘new quality combat power’ as priorities for future military dominance. Photo: Reuters
Liu Zhen

Researchers in China’s armed forces have prioritised key areas of military technologies, including AI-driven naval warfare and aerospace combat capabilities, expanding on President Xi Jinping calls for “bold innovations” in advanced technology.

In a series devoted to Xi’s concept of developing “new quality combat power”, Study Times, a publication under the Central Party School of China’s Communist Party, published articles on Monday by various People’s Liberation Army (PLA) researchers stressing that such technologies had become the strategic high ground in military dominance and were essential to winning on future battlefields.

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Xi has repeatedly pushed the PLA to develop hi-tech and advanced capabilities to win a modern war. In a meeting in March he urged officials to “boldly innovate and explore new types of combat force construction and applications, and liberate and develop new quality combat power”.
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The authors said the role of artificial intelligence was a priority for “new combat forces”, and that it was a “clear trend” that AI-powered military systems would be a “key variable in changing the rules of war”.

The authors discussed how AI technology was changing the nature of military command and decision-making, saying it could process and analyse large amounts of data to help make faster decisions, and in some cases, independently make complex tactical decisions and operations. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned drone boats were also becoming more prevalent, they said.

After Xi last month urged forces to prepare “for the military struggle at sea”, the articles discussed how “unmanned intelligent combat will deeply change the deployments of naval forces, prompting changes in battle concepts and accelerating the evolution of combat”.
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