‘War of money’: can China drag rivals into bankruptcy in a new arms race with drones?

A new low-cost engine for Chinese drones has cut the price to less than 20 per cent of the international figure

The technology is set to start a drone arms race as the US begins its own programme to ramp up production

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An artist’s impression of a Chinese supersonic drone powered by low-cost turbofan engine. Photo: Zhu Junqiang, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Published: 4:59pm, 30 Oct 2023

A new generation of high-speed, long-endurance drones powered by low-cost jet engines has entered military service in China, according to a lead scientist on the project.

And part of their job is to lure the US, among other nations, into an arms race where the real trap lies in the budget.

The thing that sets the new Chinese drones apart from other models is the low cost of their power source.

The jet engines for military drones are expensive. The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, for instance, is powered by an AE3007 turbofan engine from Rolls-Royce which costs nearly US$4 million. Add to that the price of regular services and repairs that the engines require, and those costs ends up even higher.

But thanks to a recent technological breakthrough, the People’s Liberation Army can now get drone jet engines with superior performance at less than a fifth of the international price, engineering thermal physicist Zhu Junqiang said in a presentation about the project released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences on October 19.

As the drones will be deployed in large numbers, the impact of the price gap between military budgets could be significant.

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