21ST CENTRUY WARFARE: China launches record-breaking UAV swarm.

The 11 June news report states that the swarm comprised 119 UAVs, breaking CETC’s previous record swarm of 67 UAVs. Xinhua did not mention when or where the event took place.

The size of the mini UAV swarm is greater than that trialled by the US Air Force in October 2016 when three Boeing F/A-18 Hornets deployed a swarm of 103 Perdix micro UAVs, which the US Department of Defense noted was one of the world’s largest micro UAV swarms to date.

CETC published a video in 2016 of its fixed-wing UAV swarm prototype, which shows the UAVs in a co-ordinated launch from the ground. The corporation said that the UAVs were flying ad hoc networks, sensing and avoiding collision, and demonstrating autonomous group control.

The 2016 video also indicates that the development is aimed at enhancing capabilities in the fields of collaborative intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), target acquisition, distributed wide area surveillance, and saturation attack.

My guess is that the intention is for future UAV swarms to be used to gather and feed realtime intelligence to China’s “carrier killer” ballistic missiles.