The world's first unmanned system mother ship was launched
A research ship named Zhuhai Cloud was launched in Zhuhai, China. The domestic media defined this ship as the first intelligent unmanned system mother ship in China and even in the world. According to the official media, the biggest feature and breakthrough of this unmanned research system mother ship is that it can carry dozens of air, sea and submarine unmanned systems with different observation instruments, and deploy them in batches in the target sea area. The unmanned systems will carry out adaptive networking and realize three-dimensional dynamic observation of specific targets.
However, in foreign media reports, this high-tech research ship has been linked with China's military technological progress. Foreign media, including VOA, South China Morning Post, The Times of India, etc., all focused their attention on the China Army's research trends in the development of unmanned combat systems.
it's true that these western media have always been biased by the "China threat theory" by forcibly connecting such a civilian research ship with military technology. After all, the main body of development of Zhuhai Cloud is China Academy of Sciences, not related military research institutes. However, it is undeniable that the development of military and civilian unmanned technologies and related systems in China has been at the forefront of the world at present, and it is likely to make amazing achievements in the future.
A few years ago, in the speculation about the so-called amphibious assault ship, the next generation of the People's Liberation Army, that is, some scales and claws of the legendary "76" amphibious assault ship, the bidding project for the pre-research of the ship's subsystem suddenly appeared items closely related to ejection technology, which once made many military fans think about it.
At that time, 75 amphibious assault ship was forming its combat effectiveness. However, compared with the next generation of the same type of equipment as the strong enemy, that is, the "American-class" amphibious assault ship, which appeared in the form of a "small aircraft carrier", the 75 was more like an offshore platform that emphasized the delivery of personnel and equipment by transporting or general-purpose helicopters with a certain number of fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing fighters.
In the past experience of some countries, it has been proved that if amphibious assault ship can't get enough fire projection support, it is easy to have a situation of "meat buns hitting dogs" in actual combat. I have to say a few words here, which is one of the reasons why the United States Marine Corps (Ma Run) is nicknamed "the fourth class".
Because judging from the history of the United States Marine Corps since its establishment, it has always wanted to build a "small three armed forces" with independent combat capability. However, for a long time, due to various reasons, the land or air support equipment obtained by the US Marine Corps in actual operation, if not specially developed for the Marine Corps, will generally lag behind the similar equipment installed in specialized services such as the Army or Air Force.
for example, in terms of air power, the rare fixed-wing carrier aircraft on the amphibious assault ship in Ma Run, USA, has long been AV8B with vertical take-off and landing function, that is, the Harrier carrier aircraft imported from Britain by the United States.
it's okay for such vertical take-off and landing fighters to engage in land support tasks, but it's really not enough to watch when it comes to the battle for air control by big countries' air forces in the 21st century. This is why there is a saying that after the birth of F35, the Marine Corps is more enthusiastic about its shipboard version than the naval aviation, and because the F35B series is in place, the combat mode of the US Marine Corps will be fundamentally changed.
if we understand the above question I, we can further discuss the influence of unmanned combat platform on China's new amphibious assault ship in the future. Since the construction of the 75 amphibious assault ship currently in service, there have been many voices in the domestic civil society and the military that compared with the current US Marine Corps, the Marine Corps in China lacks a usable fixed-wing carrier aircraft that is independent of the naval and air force.
It is true that such worries naturally have the psychological basis of "keeping up with the strong". We think that compared with the Marine Corps with the strongest strength and the most complete system in the world, we should "make up for what we lack", and there are also realistic considerations that the Marine Corps may face a lack of support for land fire under hypothetical conditions.
in the past, the explanation of "why not develop a vertical take-off and landing fighter for amphibious assault ship like the United States, Britain or the Soviet Union" mostly focused on the technical shortcomings in some key subsystems of China's aviation industry. Of course, the author believes that another reason why the Marine Corps of the People's Liberation Army does not seek to establish an independent fixed-wing combat fleet like the United States is that the demand in this area was not great or urgent, which greatly reduced the interest of relevant institutions in developing such weapons.
compared with the United States, China's amphibious combat forces are still attached to the "big" naval system or the "big" army system, which shows the clue from the division of military services between China and the United States. At present, China does not regard the Marine Corps as an independent service, but it is still used as an arm under the naval establishment.
In the foreseeable military operations, the Marine Corps plays a key role, and it will certainly get campaign and tactical support from the air force, navy and even the Rocket Army. It is the long-term comprehensive effect of these reasons that for a long time in the past, China did not learn from the United States to equip amphibious offensive forces with fixed-wing aviation weapons for vertical take-off and landing.
However, with the rapid development of China's economy and the expansion of overseas interests, China's navy is growing rapidly, and the amphibious combat power is also growing. In particular, the domestic amphibious assault ship has gradually formed combat effectiveness, and the demand for the Marine Corps to have a reliable multi-purpose fixed-wing support aircraft that takes into account air and sea from sea to land has become increasingly urgent.
but as we all know, we can't get such a fighter in a short time. At this time, the tender for the early research and development of the ejection facilities in amphibious assault ship in the future is even more imaginative. Generally speaking, helicopters do not need to take off by catapult. In the field of fixed-wing carrier-based fighters, most of the naval catapults currently in service all over the world are used in large aircraft carriers to assist large and medium-sized fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft to take off.
as a kind of naval ship that is not particularly large in amphibious assault ship, the carrier-based aircraft 歼 15 currently in service in China and the "Haisi Generation 歼 35" just around the corner in the future, although they should be regarded as outstanding among the fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft in service, are still too large for amphibious assault ship. Not to mention that these two types of fighters need larger landing platforms, the space required for parking these two types of fighters is also very tight and cramped for amphibious assault ship, which usually uses helicopters, which will inevitably have a serious negative impact on the original transportation function of amphibious assault ship.
In fact, in the past, when the US military used amphibious assault ship, it tried to build a so-called "small aircraft carrier" that simply emphasized the "offensive" capability and transformed its internal dock into a hangar for fixed-wing carrier aircraft. However, from the consideration of cost and functional arrangement within the system, it was proved that amphibious assault ship should keep the balance between transportation function and strike function. As far as a amphibious assault ship is concerned, its transportation capacity should be strengthened more intuitively.
Therefore, since it is difficult for the possible fixed-wing carrier aircraft to board amphibious assault ship at present, in the face of the 76 which will be equipped with ejection devices in the future, a view arises: since the available domestic fixed-wing carrier fighters are difficult to adapt to amphibious assault ship, perhaps we can consider adopting domestic unmanned aerial vehicles? This statement is currently the most likely to be realized.
domestically, China has been recognized as a powerful country in the research, development and production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs here refer not only to the "gadgets" such as ordinary civilian DJI, but also to the large-scale long-endurance hard-mounted UAVs.
I believe that you can see the clue from the attack -11 and reconnaissance -8 highlighted in the military parade on the 7th anniversary of the National Day. China's advanced UAV technology has strong technical strength.
From some military developments abroad, the US military has begun to plan to deploy MQ-25 stingray unmanned tanker on Ford-class aircraft carrier. Based on the battlefield experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States planned to deploy the Chada integrated UAV, represented by Predator and Global Hawk, at sea several years ago. Although it failed to take shape in the end, it also opened up ideas for other countries to deploy UAVs at sea.
Recently, in the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, although at present, the Russian army still maintains considerable strategic and tactical advantages in the eastern and southern fronts, in the review of the relevant situation, the use of drones, especially due to the lack of large-scale advanced drones, has caused many setbacks in some military operations.
actually, the Russian army is not without advanced unmanned aerial vehicles. the latest news points out that the relevant departments of the Russian air force have put the next generation S7 unmanned aerial vehicle into actual combat test, and achieved quite good results. However, due to the shrinking military expenditure caused by domestic economic problems in Russia in the past and the mistakes in previous military reforms, it was "not concerned" about the large-scale application of unmanned combat systems.
From the experience and lessons of Russia, we can also see that for unmanned combat forces, large-scale use must also be considered. After all, compared with the human physiological limit and other limiting factors that need to be considered in manned combat equipment, unmanned combat equipment is superior in durability and operational sustainability.
in the middle and late may of this year, in some news pictures about the Chinese naval aircraft carrier formation going out to the western Pacific for training, we have found that some drones were parked impressively on the deck of this aircraft carrier. As a matter of fact, the PLA Navy has already deployed some shipborne UAVs with reconnaissance function similar to the American RQ8A "Fire Scout" on warships for a long time. Generally, these UAVs will take off and land from the helicopter deck at the stern as a supplementary reconnaissance force attached to the escort ship.
According to some existing signs, larger UAVs will appear more frequently on the aviation deck of naval vessels in the future. Of course, at present, it seems that everyone is more willing to regard such small and medium-sized UAVs as "auxiliary", but who can guarantee that UAVs will not play a role like "attacking the ground" in the next generation 76 amphibious assault ship equipped with catapults and capable of taking off and landing larger UAVs?
since the forties and fifties of the last century, human beings tried to transform some planes into targets for testing surface-to-air missiles. Under the memory of the tragic casualties in the two world wars, human beings began to imagine "controlled unmanned weapons going to the front to fight".
With the progress of the times, unmanned weapons have become more and more intelligent and widely used, so that there are some radical voices from the government to the people who think that the future battlefield will be like a game, in which human soldiers don't have to go to the front line in person, but all kinds of robots and unmanned combat equipment will do it for them. "
in the 21st century, from the U.S. military's use of the Global Hawk to fight the so-called "terrorists" in the Middle East, to the Naka conflict in recent years and the current Russian-Ukrainian war, it is foreseeable that the experience and lessons of the warring parties in the use of drones and their impact on the results will be the long-term military commanding heights in the future military development.
just like in the early 2th century, the European naval powers pursued the caliber of artillery and the tonnage of main ships in shipbuilding competitions, and now all major powers have made great efforts to develop and apply unmanned combat systems.
China has made rapid progress in this respect, and it can be said that it has occupied a considerable advantage in the competition for this new military commanding height. We are very lucky in this respect. After all, it was difficult for our predecessors to follow the trend of military technology in the 2th century for various reasons.
In the future, we also expect more and more advanced "unmanned legions" to enter our field of vision, as a kind of artificially created silent comrades-in-arms to guard the peace of the motherland and defend the interests of the country together with PLA officers and men.