China spurred by Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine to develop smarter military drones

Name: Chinese drones among new military aircraft highlighted at Zhuhai Airshow
Uploaded: 2022-06-03T03:00:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 13 s
Description: Chinese drones among new military aircraft highlighted at Zhuhai Airshow

PLA researchers say drones will use AI and publicly available photos from social media to identify, track or kill high ranking officials behind enemy lines

The war has also drawn China’s attention to SpaceX’s Starlink: ‘The space internet has become a reality and changed the form of war’

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A Ukrainian serviceman shoots at a Russian drone with an assault rifle from a trench at the front line east of Kharkiv on March 31, 2022. Chinese military researchers predict drones armed with facial recognition and AI will be used in future conflicts. Photo: AFP

Stephen Chen

Published: 11:00am, 3 Jun 2022

The Russian military’s unexpected setbacks in the Ukraine war will prompt China to develop and use smarter, more powerful drones, according to a new study by PLA researchers.

“As an integrated platform for surveillance and combat, drones speed up the operation of the battlefield kill chain, making the progress of war faster and more flexible than ever,” they said.

But China’s current military drones need more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to forecast the movement of enemy supply units and coordinate attacks automatically using high speed communication links, the People’s Liberation Army researchers said.

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Chinese drones among new military aircraft highlighted at Zhuhai Airshow

These drones will use publicly available photos from social media to identify, track or kill high ranking officials behind enemy lines with cutting-edge facial recognition technology.

Their high definition cameras will also capture dramatic scenes on the battlefield, such as the explosion of enemy tanks and collapse of buildings, to produce clips with the intention of going viral on the internet and swaying public sentiment.

“This conflict will definitely set off a chain reaction in the military and technological sector,” said Meng Fansong, associate professor with the college of information and communication at the National University of Defence Technology in Wuhan in a paper published in the domestic peer-reviewed journal Command Control and Simulation on Tuesday.

“The future war will be a clash between technologies and systems,” said Meng and his collaborators from the PLA Air Force Aviation University in Changchun, Jilin province.