China’s hypersonic rocket drone could threaten US Navy carriers defending Taiwan

A camera-equipped satellite might be able to detect a carrier, but only when the satellite crosses the patch of ocean where the ship happens to be. Most satellites travel along orbits that allow them to survey only narrow swathes of the Earth below.

A drone could help fill the surveillance gaps. But a drone, unlike a satellite, is vulnerable to interceptions by a carrier’s planes and escorts. In developing the supersonic WZ-8, the Chinese are betting that high speed – potentially several times the speed of sound – might give the drone a fighting chance of penetrating a carrier’s defenses and pinpointing the ship’s location for its rocket crews.

PLA leadership in Beijing seems confident in the WZ-8’s basic design, which might be why – according to a leaked US intelligence report – the PLA Air Force has rushed the drone into front-line service with at least one regiment in Liu’an, in eastern China.

It’s possible the H-6 in the notorious photo was carrying a WZ-8 for further trials, or as practice for combat operations. But it’s also possible that whatever the bomber was hauling wasn’t a WZ-8 at all. Joseph Trevithick, a reporter for The War Zonequoted aviation expert Andreas Rupprecht claiming the payload in the photo is too large to be WZ-8.

Be skeptical. Reasonable assessments place the rarely-seen WZ-8 at around 37 feet in length. An H-6 is 114 feet long – and the thing it’s carrying in the photo stretches along a quarter or third of its length. Which could mean 37 feet.

Trevithick posited that, instead of a WZ-8, the bomber’s payload might have been an MD-22, a hypersonic drone Guangdong Aerodynamic Research Academy is developing for possible military use. A hypersonic vehicle travels at least five times the speed of sound while still being able to maneuver.

We know almost nothing about the MD-22 except that it is very fast and around 35 feet in length. If the thing under the H-6 was an MD-22, then the MD-22 looks a lot like the WZ-8.

All this speculation might amount to a distinction without a difference. An operational MD-22 might perform the same role that the operational WZ-8 apparently does: penetrating US air defenses in order to locate America’s most valuable warships, its carriers.

That the Chinese are testing or training with some kind of very fast recon drone – either a WZ-8 or MD-22 – is a reminder of just how serious they are about hunting American carriers. And it’s also a reminder of how important it is for the Americans to defend their carriers against high-speed drones.