The People’s Liberation Army, China, has lifted the veil off its latest military creation, unveiling a new form of warfare technology dubbed the swarm drones, which enables a soldier to concurrently command over 200 drones by himself.
The new technology, which appeared on Chinese television, represents a giant leap in unmanned warfare technology.
At its center, one finds Swarm I, which refers to a land vehicle, also called the High Mobility Swarm Weapon System. The system, which is movable, has the ability to send off 48 fixed-wing drones simultaneously, who then act in unison as one unit.
The most interesting aspects of this system, however, involve its ability to send off its drones in intricate formations, with each one tasked to perform its own roles.
The Evolution of Autonomous Drone Swarm Tactics in China
As per Xiang Xiaojia, who is a research fellow with the School of Intelligent Science within the National University of Defence Technology, each drone has its own intelligent algorithm, which facilitates “autonomous negotiation.”
Through this process, these drones can develop “a powerful, collaborative intelligent swarm.”
The sophistication endures well past simple coordination. The unmanned drones used integrate autonomous anti-jamming capabilities that allow for continued functionality despite disruption of their connection to an operator by electromagnetic interference. In effect, this makes the swarm hard to disable via conventional electronic warfare means, an element that is crucial to their effectiveness during contemporary warfare scenarios.
This is because Chinese state television CCTV hailed the efficiency of the system in operation, whereby it is achievable to control over 200 drones launched in unison from different vehicles by just a single controller. This is a stark contrast in terms of man-hours required in operating drones at such an enormous scale.
China’s Multi-Mission Leap in Unmanned Systems
The PLA first demonstrated its ability to deploy a drone swarm at the 2021 Zhuhai air show with the original Swarm I system, which demonstrated capabilities for wide-area reconnaissance and saturating multiple targets at once.
Since then, technology has visibly accelerated. At the 2024 iteration of the same air show, China revealed the Swarm II, with some major improvements over its predecessor.
The redesigned variant has a maximum speed of 100 kph and over one hour of endurance. More importantly, perhaps, the Swarm II was fitted with payload-carrying capabilities, allowing the drones to tote along reconnaissance pods, munitions, and radio relay devices. This turns what could be solely a surveillance system into a multi-mission system that can perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as strike missions.
Adding another dimension to China’s drone capabilities, the country’s first “drone carrier” amphibious assault ship began sea trials at the end of 2025. It could extend China’s ability to launch drone operations far from its borders, enabling strikes against targets relatively distant.
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China’s progress can be understood in the broader context of the global drive to improve and proliferate advanced drone technologies.
The Ukraine-Russia global conflict, which began in 2022, has become a testing ground for drone warfare, with both sides extensively employing drone warfare. A different trend can be noted from the United States Army, which employs 3D printers for drone crafting in the field.
As drone technology has evolved, countermeasures follow suit. There are defense startups across the United States working on AI-powered drone killer jets aimed at hunting down enemy drones during their flights. The American armed forces are testing microwave and laser-based technologies with an ability to take down multiple drone attacks at once, including a drone defense vehicle laser with a wattage of 20,000.
As an example, the British Royal Navy, which is a part of the United Kingdom, plans to install an experimental laser system called DragonFire on a destroyer.
It is trying to bring down enemy drones by laser fire, which is an economically feasible proposition since it will only amount to a mere expense of $13 a time. In contrast, a conventional missile can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The demonstration of swarm technology in China, which involves the coordinated control of multiple autonomous vehicles, points out the speed with which autonomous warfare tools are advancing worldwide. Countries’ ongoing investment strategies in not only offensive autonomous vehicles, aka drones, but even defense technologies, are causing the nature of warfare to evolve into what, until recentl,y could qualify as science fiction indeed.
