This year’s Zhuhai air show – China’s largest aviation event and aerospace trade expo – also offered a rare glimpse into its latest unmanned maritime vehicles.
According to Chinese digital news outlet The Paper, mega conglomerate China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) displayed a variety of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) at the air show, in numbers far exceeding those unveiled at previous editions of the biennial event.
These included the Haishen 6000 (Poseidon 6000), a 7.6 metre-long (UUV) with a displacement of 3 tonnes, a maximum working depth of 6,000 metres and able to reach speeds of up to 4 knots. Multiple sensors on board can help it detect mines, and it can also carry towed acoustic decoys that use sonar signals to deflect active torpedoes.
It is equipped with deep-water targets in distress high-resolution low-light illumination system, acoustic beacon directional guidance sonar, and hydroacoustic detection side scan sonar.
The (UUV) has a wide range of working depth, load capacity, long endurance, search and detection capabilities, etc., and can be fully autonomous fine search for deep-sea targets, detection, positioning, the implementation of deep-sea underwater target search and detection, and marine scientific research tasks.
The massive application of unmanned combat platforms at sea would inevitably lead to profound changes in how naval warfare was carried out, it added.
These systems mainly consist of (UUV), underwater vehicles featuring propulsion, and underwater gliders pushed by currents.
Maintenance costs are not high and threat to crew safety is lowered, with the added advantage of higher manoeuvrability and deployability in shallow waters.
The article suggested that China could gradually replace traditional naval warfare platforms like submarines with unmanned systems, to carry out anti-submarine patrol, close-up reconnaissance and even live-fire attacks.
“It’s foreseeable that unmanned platforms will gradually become the main force in maritime confrontation. And they will become the key to seize information superiority, implement precise strikes, and complete special combat missions in information warfare,”
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