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China’s military mouthpiece has called for the large-scale and centralised deployment of unmanned combat forces at key locations to fully realise their potential in any future intelligent warfare, amid rising tensions with the US in the Indo-Pacific.
In an article published on Tuesday, the PLA Daily urged “innovative” organisation and applications of unmanned systems, highlighting their “decisive and dominant” role in future conflicts, including the capability to conduct close-range precision strikes.
“Driven by technologies such as autonomous unmanned systems and advanced networks, unmanned combat innovation is undergoing dramatic transformation,” the article said.
“We must move beyond traditional thinking, abandon the conventional use of unmanned systems as merely auxiliary forces, and develop a new operational theory centred on their large-scale, centralised deployment.”
Citing Russia and Ukraine’s efforts to build unmanned systems forces, as well as the US Defence Department’s Replicator initiative – which aims to field thousands of unmanned systems across air, land, sea, and space within the next two years – the PLA Daily argued that the idea of massed deployment of unmanned systems had become a “consensus” in military modernisation.
“The next phase of competition will focus on which side can rapidly concentrate the necessary systems and personnel, pioneer new models of organisation and deployment, and lead the way in building an unmanned force with cutting-edge technology and tactics,” it said.
US-China competition in UAVs and unmanned systems is a key front in their intensifying strategic and technological rivalry, particularly amid the rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
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