Highly Impressive Lineup Of Chinese Military Drone Types Caught By Satellite

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Winston

Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Highly Impressive Lineup Of Chinese Military Drone Types Caught By Satellite
The display of China's most prominent operational and developmental unmanned military aircraft is another sign that Beijing is betting big on drones.
8 Dec 2019

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...se-air-combat-drone-types-caught-by-satellite

The lineup includes China's two high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) drones, the Devine Eagle and Soar Eagle (green arrows). It also includes the Wing Loong series of Predator and Reaper-like and the smaller Rainbow remotely pilot vehicles (blue arrows). China's two most prominent stealthy flying-wing drones are also present, including the large Sharp Sworn UCAV and the smaller surveillance oriented type known as the Tian Ying that has been displayed publicly in the past (red arrows). We also see the jet-powered Cloud Shadow (black arrow) and no less than three Tengden TB001 twin-boom medium-altitude, long-endurance drones (yellow arrows).

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“caught by satellite”

The Chinese are well aware of our satellite capabilities and orbits. These were put on display for us to see.

It’s an impressive display. A worrying one as well since the Chinese have no compunctions against armed autonomous drones.
 
“caught by satellite”

The Chinese are well aware of our satellite capabilities and orbits. These were put on display for us to see.

It’s an impressive display. A worrying one as well since the Chinese have no compunctions against armed autonomous drones.
The image was originally on a Chinese site, so it was probably taken by a Chinese asset for domestic consumption. I suspect the only reason it is claimed that it's a satellite image is that this must have been what was claimed in the original Chinese article, but you can't trust them be truthful. I doubt it was one of their military satellites since they would never release anything to give even a hint of their resolution. Hell, they're even secretive about their non-military space missions. It could have been taken by an aircraft (like one of their drones) to give a false impression of their satellites' resolution if that's the impression they're trying to give or purchased from a commercial Earth imaging satellite service whose images are amazingly high resolution these days. Taking an image from one of their drones after the drones were lined up for display/review would be a nice gimmick for the big brass.
 
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Back to the drones. The ones with green arrows above concern me. They are not exactly platforms that would be weaponized but those in particular appear to use sailplane style wings which would indicate China has long range drones for high altitude spying. The red ones look more stealth strike attack like and probably have some form of air to ground precision guided bombs or missiles. Also concerning but not as bad as losing intelligence assets from air via aerial spy drones.
 
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