PLA mulls drone-only island blockade while the US plans drone-only intervention in Taiwan

After the US unveiled its ‘Hellscape’ drone plan for Taiwan, the PLA has detailed a simulation of an island blockade using just drones

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China has revealed it has the ability to form a blockade of an island using just drones, after the US revealed its own drone-only strategy for defending Taiwan. Photo: China Defence Forum

Published: 6:00am, 5 Jul 2024Updated: 8:44am, 5 Jul 2024

China’s military has the ability to impose and maintain a blockade on an island solely with drones, according to a study released by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last month.

Meanwhile, drones are also the key to America’s latest plan for a military intervention over the island of Taiwan – a drone-only strategy dubbed “Hellscape”.

“Area blockade and control stands as a typical application scenario for drone swarms in military operations,” the project team led by Chen Huijie, an engineer with the 92116 unit of the PLA, wrote in a peer-reviewed paper in the Chinese academic journal Command Control & Simulation published on June 5.

Outcomes of the “mission-level simulation verification conducted for aerial unmanned clusters in conjunction with an actual combat mission” have rarely been disclosed before due to military sensitivity, Chen’s team said.

The objective of the combat mission outlined in the paper was to form a blockade and control an unnamed island with a narrow shape similar to Taiwan’s terrain. In the scenario, the island was fortified with a large number of air defence missile launchers, while hostile warships and submarines prowled the surrounding waters.

“Given the presence of widely dispersed, highly concealed and time-sensitive mobile threats on the island and its adjacent waters, employing traditional manned forces for reconnaissance and assaults poses a challenge of low cost-effectiveness,” Chen’s team wrote.