Drone carriers could mean a killer edge for the enemies of the West

drone carriers could mean a killer edge for the enemies of the west

A US Navy carrier drone in sea trials. The US is taking the approach of integrating drones into the mostly manned air wings of conventional carriers - Timothy Walter/Navy Media Content Service

China has secretly built an aircraft carrier for drones. The approximately 500-foot vessel appears in recent satellite photos of an obscure shipyard on the Yangtze River outside Shanghai.

It’s not the first big-deck warship designed to launch and recover unmanned aerial vehicles. Turkey commissioned an assault ship designed for a drone air wing last year. And, around the same time, Iran began modifying a tanker ship into a drone carrier.

But by placing third in the race to send aerial drones to sea aboard their own flattop, China still comes in way ahead of the United States and other Western powers when it comes to developing a whole new type of warship. Western fleets are focusing on integrating drones with existing carriers that primarily operate manned aircraft.

drone carriers could mean a killer edge for the enemies of the west

Britain has also carried out trials of drones with conventional aircraft carriers - PO Phot JJ Massey/Royal Navy

Which approach is best remains to be seen. But it’s notable that the Turks, Iranians and Chinese are the ones really testing a new naval concept, for better or worse. If drone carriers prove functional and efficient, Turkey, Iran and China could be the first to deploy them on a meaningful scale. Other countries, if they choose to copy the concept, would be playing catch-up.

It speaks to the sheer scale of Chinese naval shipbuilding that foreign media didn’t notice the new drone carrier until nearly two years after the vessel apparently began construction. The overhead imagery points to a vessel that’s roughly as long as a World War II escort carrier but wider, with space on its deck for potentially scores of fixed-wing drones – or many hundreds of small quadcopter drones.

Any ship with a big flat deck can launch and recover drones; what will likely make or break these new drone carriers is what’s invisible from the outside: the control systems. Even with the advent of highly-capable artificial intelligence for drone navigation, most drones still need help  – from human operators sitting behind banks of radios – launching and landing and firing weapons.

drone carriers could mean a killer edge for the enemies of the west

Turkish warship TCG Anadolu. Classed by Turkey as a 'Multi-purpose amphibious assault ship', the Anadolu can carry various types of manned helicopter and/or fixed-wing drones such as the Bayraktar TB3 or the jet-powered, stealthy Bayraktar Kizilelma - Turkish Defence Industry Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty

Plus, drones are capable of piping back to their bases – on land or at sea – vast volumes of video and other data that require intensive analysis, usually by human experts. It’s not for no reason that, in developing its own carrier-launched drone – the stealthy MQ-25 – the US Navy devoted as much effort to the drone’s controls and communications as it did to the airframe.

If the Turkish, Iranian and Chinese navies can solve the control problem, they could be the first to wage war at sea with robotic air wings. The advantages of drones over manned planes are, by now, well-established: they’re relatively inexpensive and thus deployable in large numbers – and disposable.

Lose a drone – or a hundred drones – in combat, and the cost is strictly monetary. There are no bodies to recover, no skilled pilots to replace and fewer political ramifications than would result from losing a manned plane and its crew.

But don’t assume, as the Turks, Iranians and Chinese tinker with their new drone carriers, that these experiments will all prove that drone carriers actually work – and are worth it. It’s possible to imagine what could go wrong.

The crews could struggle to operate delicate drones in salt spray, bad weather and roiling seas. They could fail to maintain a sortie rate that justifies the cost of building a drone-only carrier. It might be difficult to deconflict the radio channels as more and more drones take flight from the same vessel. Lacking high-performance fighter aircraft for protection, the carriers themselves might prove too vulnerable for intensive combat.

It’s worth remembering that the US Navy chose to integrate its new drones with its existing manned carrier planes in combined manned-unmanned air wings rather than develop a new ship class exclusively for drone operations.

The US fleet’s dozen big supercarriers are stable platforms in all weather conditions. They’re already capable of launching hundreds of sorties per day, day after day. Their elaborate communications suites already possess massive bandwidth. And sailing with scores of supersonic fighters, they’re among the best-protected warships in history.

It may be that, at the end of this era of drone experimentation, the Turkish, Iranian and Chinese navies concede the US Navy was right all along – and drones shouldn’t have their own carriers.

Of course, it’s also possible the Turks, Iranians and Chinese discover drones should have their own carriers. If so, they’ll already have drone carriers in the water; the Americans and their Western allies will have to build them from scratch.

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day's agenda from The Telegraph - direct to your inbox seven days a week.

OTHER NEWS

15 minutes ago

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is Teasing Answers to a Big Qunari Mystery

15 minutes ago

Fed's Bowman Says 'Not Yet' Appropriate to Cut Rates

15 minutes ago

Why Dunkin' Donuts' New Commercial Actress Looks So Familiar

15 minutes ago

Costly election pledges in France stoke fears of splurges that risk pushing country deeper into debt

15 minutes ago

Mark Cuban offloads 14 NFTs from his collection in two days

15 minutes ago

Rashee Rice on maturity: 'This is a step in a better direction for me'

15 minutes ago

Oleksandr Usyk no longer undisputed champion just a month after beating Tyson Fury

15 minutes ago

Julian Assange formally admits spying charge as part of a plea deal with US authorities

15 minutes ago

The Continuous Hockey Hall of Fame Snub of Former Maple Leafs Forward Alex Mogilny is Starting to Get Ridiculous

19 minutes ago

Kelowna city manager earned $100K more than B.C. premier in 2023

21 minutes ago

Higher ed: Top CUNY official gets eye-popping 16% pay bump, bringing salary to over $320K

21 minutes ago

Sydney’s Luna Park listed for sale, tipped to fetch $70m price tag

21 minutes ago

LeBron James And Anthony Davis Want The Lakers To Go "All-In" On Another Superstar

21 minutes ago

Kane on England - Slovenia and Bayern Munich future

21 minutes ago

Government lays foundation for social housing upswing

21 minutes ago

Glastonbury weather forecast: Festival to be dry says Met Office - but it still may rain

21 minutes ago

Fatima Payman avoids expulsion from Labor Party

21 minutes ago

Alimentation Couche-Tard earnings drop as consumers watch spending

21 minutes ago

Ravens TE says he's a 'chess piece,' will play all over field

21 minutes ago

PFF ranks Falcons' defensive line among the worst in NFL

21 minutes ago

England booed after advancing at Euro 2024

24 minutes ago

Canada beat 10-man Peru 1-0 to boost Copa America knockout stage hopes

24 minutes ago

Keppel Infrastructure Trust unit secures $612.5 million green loan

29 minutes ago

American woman goes missing while attending yoga retreat in the Bahamas

29 minutes ago

Woman pleads guilty to murder of Hollywood consultant and social justice advocate

29 minutes ago

BHP shares fall on decarbonisation update

29 minutes ago

When was the first Black Barbie made? Later than you think, as we learn in this new Netflix documentary

29 minutes ago

There may be a deeper meaning to Andy Petree's sudden retirement

29 minutes ago

New York judge lifts parts of Donald Trump's gag order ahead of presidential debate

29 minutes ago

Jonathan Jackson is returning to “General Hospital” as Lucky Spencer

29 minutes ago

AMD: ‘We are running as fast as we possibly can’

29 minutes ago

This is Fernando Alonso’s ‘extreme’ Aston Martin: the V12, manual-only Valiant

29 minutes ago

Moses injury scare forces crucial Blues switch

29 minutes ago

Apartment, townhouse regulators to face new crackdown

29 minutes ago

How The 1958 Bonneville Saved Pontiac From Chevrolet

29 minutes ago

T20 World Cup semi-finals - schedule, key players & how to follow

29 minutes ago

Kylian Mbappe makes goalscoring return to France line-up but draw could prove costly

32 minutes ago

Stanley Cup fun facts: Height, weight, names and more

32 minutes ago

Multiple people ID'd teen in shooting of retired CPD officer, 2nd attacker sought, prosecutors say

33 minutes ago

Urgent need to investigate Trump’s business assets in Scotland, say Greens