The Zhu Hai Yun, or ‘Zhu Hai Cloud,’ was launched from Guangzhou in late May. It is a vessel that is alternately described as ‘drone carrier,’ ‘drone mothership,’ or simply ‘research vessel’ by officials seeking to downplay the significance of the PLA Navy one day gaining an advantage in a future frontier of modern warfare.
Though highly experimental and preliminary, the ship contains certain features that could one day be commonplace in naval conflict, an eventuality that has been hinted at by the resounding success of drone-based combat in the Ukraine war.
Analysis
The vessel is believed to be armed with 50 airborne, surface, and underwater drones. Of course, the nature of the drones is crucial in determining their lethality; in this case, if Chinese state media is to be believed, the Zhu Hai Yun seems to be equipped with non-lethal varieties and the ship is framed primarily as a scientific venture in its helping to create a more accurate map of the ocean floor (which incidentally benefits the PLA Navy’s submarine operations in and around Taiwan and the South China Sea).
Two features of the Zhu Hai Yun stand out. First, it’s fully autonomous and does not have any human crew. This leads in to a second key feature: with less space needed for essential human amenities, and drones taking up less space than conventional fighter jets, the vessel is much smaller than a conventional aircraft carrier.
The Zhu Hai Yun is believed to be around 90 meters with a top speed of 18 knots. That’s about a third of the size of a US Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, though the Chinese drone carrier moves at under half of its top-speed.
Smaller and not weighed down by essential materiel or the demands of human psychology, this type of drone carrier can operate autonomously for long periods of time and push China’s surveillance umbrella outward from the first island chain. The vessel’s autonomous functionality doesn’t necessarily entail constant operation by real-time remote control. According to Chinese officials, the ship has software in place that allows it to execute various types of missions based on its programming.
