Thread by @jesusfroman

1/20
THREAD🇨🇳Chinese Military UAVs

The night between 2&3 October 2021, a few 🇨🇳PLA military exercises took place in central and northwest of China. We’ll focused on the ones were UAVs were used and how they used them, in a fairly traditional way:
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2/20
A joint Land-Air fire strike drill exercise took place in Xinjiang Military Region. It took place with a Blue & a Red team. The strikes took place in a training ground at a 5,100mm altitude, which clearly points towards India

3/20
As it can be seen in, a KVD001/ASN-207 UAV was used in an ISTAR role to keep constant watch of the operational area and to point out objectives for the artillery. This UAV was connected to its Ground Control Station, who was connected to a PLA Rocket Force MLRS battery

4/20
A 370mm rocket firing PHL-16/PCL191 MLRS was used to carry out in-depth (up to 350km) attacks against high-value targets. This could be considered a strategic use of artillery. Interesting to see the integration between PLAGroundForces & PLARocketForces

5/20
The ASN-207 UAV pinpointed the targets and the PHL-16/PCL191 MLRS attacked the four targets. This MLRS can also fire 300mm rockets. Also, this MLRS just went into service, but they don’t rely on their newer ASN-209 UAV, but in their experienced a& relatively old ASN-207 UAV

6/20
Allegedly, the stroke targets were concealed fortifications and field ammunition depots. This exercise is orientated to strike not only hit high-value targets such as airports&ammunition depots, but also vehicle formation or assembly troop points from long distances&heights

7/20
A hidden control & command post was also revealed. ASN-207’s information would normally take a few minutes to reach the artillery battery, so in these cases, a more direct approach is and was taken. The target was immediately neutralized by a reconnaissance & attack UCAV

8/20
As time was critical, a CH-4B UCAV was used for this attack instead with two air-to-surface missiles to make sure the target is destroyed. Its Ground Control Station can be seen in the background of the video

9/20
A live-fire drill took also place in the Northwest Gobi desert by an Artillery Unit during daylight and night. As the drill started, a sandstorm took place

10/20
In this case, by the number of vehicles, the artillery unit was at least formed by (what it looks like) 2 batteries of 5x PCL-181 truck-mounted 155 mm self-propelled howitzers. They were supported by UAV. All pretty standard

11/20
As in the previous exercise, an ASN-207 UAV was launched to be the eyes of the PLA artillery group on the ground. Generally unknown, the ASN-207 is 1 of the most used drones by the PLA. They have thousands of them, in this aspect, PLA rely on quantity, rather than quality

12/20
A vehicle convoy & a fortification were spotted and the information was sent back to the Ground Control Station, who managed to targeting process. This process could take a few minutes, hence density in modern battlegrounds needs to be reduced as much as possible

13/20
The targets were attacked by the artillery group. It would be good to note that this sort of tactical use of the UAVs as ISTAR masterpieces is very similar to the Russian one, that we have seen many times before in Donbas (ie Zelenopillya) or Syria

14/20
As standard procedure in any other army, after the attack the batteries change position to continue with the next artillery salvo, avoid detection and destruction while reconnaissance UAVs continue with the search

15/20
At night, several flares are shot to continue with the activity,allow night operations by other branches, help with Battlefield Damage Assessment or ISTAR. PLA rely heavily on direct datalink rather than satellite communications for UAVs,which difficult Long Range strikes

16/20
The artillery unit continue with the strikes during the night. It is obvious that this sort of exercises will also include some low-level EW elements (radar signature targeting) integrated with the UAV ISTAR platforms and other UAVs used as communication relays

17/20
Another exercise took place in an undisclosed location (probably Sichuan Western Plateau). It also took placed at night & day and included 2 Red-Blue teams in a confrontation scenario with vehicles, breaching exercises, artillery drill & a helicopter air assault

18/20
Although not visible, it is very likely that ASN-207 also took part in these exercises. If you still do not know the ASN UAV family, please take a look to this thread I made some time ago about the whole family:

19/20
An Air Assault took place with a Changhe Aircraft Industries Z-8G transport helicopter. It is stated that an UAV (probably a ASN-207 or ASN-209, ) was used to do a previous landing reconnaissance before the infants disembarked

20/20
Additionally, PLA have been seen using plenty of samllUAV for tactical & low level tactical reconnaissance during their exercises as reconnaissance support for their troops, from the ASN-15, their copy of the US Raven to small quadcopters
/END

@LeeAndy33996956 @Ch_Ru_GER