It is a dark night and visibility is poor in the eastern Pacific. A group of U.S. destroyers led by the USS Kid is training about 200 miles off the Californian coast. So far it has been a relatively standard operation but the tempi-n-m everything changes. Let's start appearing around the ship. They keep their distance but move around the vessel and can keep up with the ship's speed. They are visible to optical sensors and the gigantic SPU-Y1 radar can track them. When one gets a bit closer, the crew gets a glimpse of a quadcopter but the duration and the speed performances are beyond what can be expected from a commercial drone. The USS Fin, another Arleighberg destroyer, reports similar sightings and then it's the turn of USS Russell and the USS Rafael Pereira to report in. All the ships are now engaged and their first reaction is to gather all the intelligence possible about these UAVs. What they do not realize immediately is that they are the object of intelligence being gathered. No, I'm not launching a new Technotriller series. What you've just heard is a very short account of what happened to these ships for two nights, the 14th and the 15th of July 2019. Only after the fact and after a lengthy investigation spanning multiple years, it became clear that the drones were coming from a merchant ship that could be linked to the Chinese armed forces. Well, this link is not 100% sure but there is a message here. Welcome to the new Cold War. So the Chinese seem to have made a strategic choice to develop their unmanned capabilities. They have invested heavily for over a decade, from cheap and expendable commercial quadcopters to high altitude long endurance drones. They also filled the first operational stealthy U-Cav, the GJ-11 sharp sword. It is possible that the GJ-11 was inspired by US drones captured by the Iranians in 2011, but since then, the aircraft has evolved a lot and it entered operational service in 2019. For now, it can't operate from carriers, but there are definitely plans to create a naval variant to be operated from the Type 003 carrier and potentially from the Type 076 amphibial landing ships. But the GJ-11 is just the tip of the iceberg. The Chinese have funded dozen of varieties of drones and UAVs using their many state-owned corporations that also build their space and missile technology. Moreover, the plan is already building up its capability across the whole spectrum of its military assets and they are deploying those capabilities on land and at sea. For example, China's second carrier, the Shandong, was spotted on June this year with a small fleet of commercial or commercial derivative drones on its flight deck. And these images really highlight how the People's Liberation Army is increasing its effort to develop various unmanned aircraft, including those that can operate together in networked swarms. If that were not enough, there is now the case of the Zhuhayun. The Zhuhayun is 290-foot oceanic research vessel designed to deploy various underwater and aerial drones for various purposes. And this ship is also drone itself and it can either be remotely controlled by a pilot or can be left to navigate the high seas autonomously. In the words of the manufacturer, it is the world first intelligent mothership. And though Beijing officially described that mothership as a maritime research tool, press news acknowledged that the vessel hosts some military capabilities that can intercept besiege and expel invasive targets. Whatever this means. What matters is that there is nothing like this in American or Western availability. All this effort is becoming to affect the never-ending game played by modern military forces. Beyond the 2019 case that we have already described that anyway is not officially attributed to the Chinese, there have been plenty of other examples. In August 2021, the Japanese self-defense force led several fighter shorties intercept PLAs drones caught flying south of Okinawa. The drones were of the class of the American Predators or Reapers and they were believed to be collecting intelligence in the waters of the Miyako Strait. It is a critical point of entry to the Pacific and it has been the theater of increasing Chinese activity. These adversaries drones are meant to stimulate America's most capable air defenses and those of the Allies as well to collect electronic intelligence of an extremely high quality. By gathering this intelligence, then countermeasures can be developed. Drones can be developed to disrupt or justify them. Rover capabilities can be estimated and eventually cloned and tactics can be recorded and exploited. Drones like those of 2019 or 2021 are sucking up or helping an under- nearby platform to suck up a lot of sensitive information about potential opponents. These drones were baiting US or Japanese assets, gathering intelligence about their response or lack their offer for future actions that we all hope are never going to happen. And by the way, a ship's or an aircraft electronic signature is one of the critical pieces of information that are required to successfully engage the asset. It is so because it can guarantee a certain identification before opening fire. This fixes the IFF problem which is the main problem of modern, long-range, distributed, network centric, multi-domain warfare. I think that nothing epitomizes the Chinese effort like this picture. This is what is believed to be a satellite image that appeared on the Chinese Internet in December 2019. This is the Malanzer base apron, the Chinese center for developing UAVs. As you can see there is everything there. There are large, long-range, high altitude vehicles. There are medium-sized drones that are relevant in a tactical or operational context. There are small drones that are supposed to operate in swarms. There are unmanned helicopters and there are U-caves and so on and so on and so on. This is just a part of the development going on in China. We will not go through all of them in detail. Today this was just an overview video. This is just the beginning of a series that probably will keep us occupied on and off for a very long time. Pointy that I want you to make is that it is safe, at least for me, to say that the Chinese are speeding ahead of the West in UAVs and U-Cav development. So this is something that is definitely worth learning about. Anyway, feel free to draw your own conclusions and let me know in the comments below they are open for everyone who has something to say. If you are interested in the development of Chinese military we have several videos on this channel about the Chinese Armed Forces, Chinese Air Force and the Chinese Navy and they are going to appear beside me. 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