Meet China’s Killer Drones
From Iraq to Nigeria, countries looking for cheap, armed drones are increasingly turning to China — and leaving the United States behind.
By Adam Rawnsley | January 14, 2016, 4:56 PM
Iraqi officials revealed last weekend that one of their armed drones carried out an airstrike which mistakenly killed nine members of a Shiite militia near Tikrit in a friendly fire incident. The news came as a surprise, mostly because many people didn’t know Iraq had armed drones.
Iraq, for the record, very much does. And so do a number of countries, especially in the Middle East, thanks to the rise of China as a prolific developer and no-questions-asked exporter of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Chinese exports are now helping to loosen the door policy of the once-exclusive club of countries with drones capable of destroying targets on the ground. Unmanned Chinese aircraft like the armed Caihong, or “Rainbow,” series of drones are fast becoming the Kalashnikovs of the drone world — entry-level alternatives for countries eager to achieve a basic unmanned strike capability quickly and cheaply.
Turns out there are a lot of eager buyers. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt have bought armed Chinese drones, as have Pakistan, Nigeria, and Iraq. Actually using the robotic aircraft hasn’t always gone smoothly: Nigeria’s armed CH-3, short for “Caihong-3,” drones first became public when one of them surfaced in photos of a crash in the northeastern part of the country, though it’s unclear whether the aircraft went down due to technical problems or ground fire. Two CH-4 drones also reportedly crashed in Algeria while undergoing testing by the Algerian military, which has been weighing a purchase.
Those countries are turning to Chinese drones because they’re easier to buy — and much cheaper — than their American counterparts. Washington has strict limits on which countries can buy U.S.-made armed drones. China is willing to sell them to anyone with cash to spend.
Washington has strict limits on which countries can buy U.S.-made armed drones. China is willing to sell them to anyone with cash to spend.
China’s drone marketing revolves around a three-pronged strategy of “price, privacy, and product,” according to Ian Easton, a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Virginia, think tank focused on Asian security issues.
On the product side, armed drones had been the almost exclusive and rarely exported preserve of Western countries like the United States and Israel. But China has spent years working to develop its own UAV industry to catch up with the United States, in part to ensure it could keep pace with American military technology in the event of a future conflict between the two superpowers.
“This is a sector they’ve been investing in heavily since just after 2000. There are anywhere between 75 [and] 100 UAV-related companies, both private and state-owned, building things out to meet demand,” says Richard Fisher Jr., a senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a think tank in Alexandria, Virginia, focused on international security issues. “The Chinese government gives them all lunch money, and they just work building new things. Sometimes the government will buy them. Sometimes they’ll let these companies export them.”
That investment has helped the Chinese drone industry market cheaper, albeit somewhat less capable, versions of the iconic American Predator and Reaper drones to a wide international market — all without forcing buyers to jump through the political and regulatory hurdles that exist in the United States. In addition to U.S. national arms export regulations, the United States abides by the voluntary international Missile Technology Control Regime, which asks members to apply a “strong presumption of denial” to exports of drones that can carry a 1,100-pound payload more than 185 miles.
Chinese drone companies also spare buyers some of the controversy associated with armed drones by making the actual transactions as opaque as possible. Easton says Chinese drone makers are protective of their clients’ privacy, revealing little about buyers or prices.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly bought the armed GJ-1 variant of the Wing Loong drone, developed by Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group.
But it’s the CH-3 and CH-4B armed drones, made by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) and marketed by Aerospace Long-March International Trade (ALIT), that appear to be the most popular models so far.
A number of countries began adding those drones to their fleets in 2015. The Nigerian Air Force showed off its own CH-3 during a visit from its chief of air staff in July. Pakistan’s Burraq drone, reportedly based on the CH-3, carried out its first strike in September. Iraq revealed itself as a CH-4B customer in October, and in December IHS Jane’s published an analysis of satellite imagery which appeared to point to a CH-4B on the runway at Saudi Arabia’s Jizan Regional Airport.
Poster Comment:
China will sell to anyone with the money who wants to buy them. But the U.S. has strict limits on who they would allow to buy them. Does this sound strangely like the Chinese might sell to terrorists?
And so it seems the Saudis are willing to buy Chinese drones. Now the U.S. might be left in the dust by a long time purchaser of U.S. weapons systems.