Chinese engineers say they have found flaws in the latest US combat drone
- Their analysis suggests its design prioritised weapons and fuel at the expense of manoeuvrability
- Previous study had warned the drones could quickly form large swarms and pose a severe threat to the PLA in a conflict
Their estimates are based on some photos, openly available information and reverse-engineering software. They found that the XQ-58A Valkyrie, an unmanned combat aerial vehicle, was not good at aerial combat.
When making a U-turn, for instance, it can withstand a pull of only about 1.7 times that of gravity, according to their calculations. In a dogfight, most fighter jets need to brake against a force seven times that of gravity or higher.
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Rare look at Chinese unmanned drone in flight during emergency communication drills
“Through the inversion of the XQ-58A design process, it can be seen that with the continuous breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and network data transmission technology, the ‘loyal wingman’ represented by XQ-58A will gradually become the main force on the battlefield and become a new leading power in the transformation of the man-machine coordinated combat model,” senior engineer Lu Yuanjie and colleagues at the Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute wrote in a paper published in domestic peer-reviewed journal Aircraft Design.
