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Chinese Flying Wing UCAV Testing Accelerating Based On Satellite Imagery, Videos

China's expanding work on flying-wing uncrewed combat air vehicles comes as similar designs have disappeared in the U.S., at least publicly.

Work on the GJ-11, which has already come with a growing eye toward future shipboard operations, swarming in cooperative groups, and teaming with crewed combat jets, reflects a broader expansion of testing of Chinese flying-wing UCAV designs. Little is known about the CS-5000T, but “[as far as I know], the CS-5000T is a demonstrator for an ISR UAV [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance uncrewed aerial vehicle] with a secondary strike role,” Andreas Rupprecht, a longtime China aerospace observer and contributor to The War Zone, wrote on X. For a time, the X-47B looked set to be the precursor to a new fleet of stealthy pilotless strike and reconnaissance platforms for the Navy’s carrier air wings before that was supplanted by a plan to acquire drone tankers with secondary ISR capabilities, which led to Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray.

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