What R&D breakthroughs are required to give China acarrier-borne UCAV?
Military experts are currently speculating on whether China's aircraft carrier may beequipped with unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV). This has not only increased publicinterest in these new "robot fighters", but also led China's military devotees to wonderwhether China's forthcoming self-developed aircraft carrier will similarly be equipped withshipborne UCAVs.
The technical threshold of the unmanned air vehicle is relatively low. A company that canmanufacture sophisticated model aircraft has the technology to develop a UAV. However,the threshold of a UCAV is more than 10 times higher than that of a UAV. The combatcapability of UCAV requires particular abilities in target identification and autonomousattack. Thus the requirements of the observing and targeting system (eyes), the controlsystem (brain), and the communication system (mouth and ears) of a UCAV are very high.On the one hand, the UCAV should be able to detect the target that is to be attacked, whiletransmitting images to remote controllers; on the other hand, the UCAV should be able toreceive remote directions based on human judgment, and then launch attacks or engage incombat under remote control.
Shipborne UAVs were not manufactured specifically for aircraft carriers. It is already thecase that some advanced modern destroyers and surface vessels have been equipped withshipborne UAVs.
But the greater platform size of an aircraft carrier creates the opportunity for large-scaleUAVs with combat and attack capabilities. However, this presents a technical difficulty -carrier-borne UCAVs need all the functions of ordinary UCAVs, but also require anindependent capacity to take off from and land on aircraft carriers. The requirements ofcarrier-borne UCAVs include not only attack and combat capability, but also the delicatemaneuvers of 'intelligent' aircraft.
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（Editor：YanMeng、Liang Jun）
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