China is building drone swarms—and advancing the AI technology that controls them, increasingly without regard for safety considerations or human oversight.

As competition between the US and China intensifies, a concerning military-industrial footrace is emerging in artificial intelligence. Chinese developments in the AI sector are especially concerning, given Beijing’s long-established civil-military fusion and its relative lack of ethical, legal, or social oversight to AI development. The counter-effect of Chinese investment—American investment in military AI systems out of fear of being overtaken—creates a fear-based competition that is less likely to pause for safety or alignment given the strategic and great power stakes involved.

China is currently making aggressive investments in autonomous drones and swarming systems for the sake of countering traditional US advantages in manned aircraft, naval tonnage, and global basing. Deriving proof of concept from the Ukraine War and from Houthi harassment of US aircraft carriers in the Red Sea, Beijing recognizes that relatively inexpensive autonomous systems can meaningfully balance against superior forces. 

Automated Drone Swarms Can Devastate Conventional Platforms

In 2017, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) conducted a highly publicized “swarm test” of 119 fixed-wing autonomous kamikaze drones, launched from tubes mounted on the back of a truck. In the years since, China has claimed larger and larger tests, many of which remain classified and have not been widely discussed on Chinese social media.  Rather than relying on a single vulnerable controller, the CETC swarms communicate with one another using onboard algorithms; these platforms use real-time pathfinding, automated target recognition, and multi-agent reinforcement learning. 

China, like the United States, is also developing loyal wingman systems—roughly fighter-sized drones that accompany manned jets into combat. AVIC’s Feihong-97 and GJ-11 Sharp Sword UCAV are the most visible prototypes, understood to be flying in formation with Chengdu J-20 fighters. The concept is simple: a nation’s air force can saturate the battle space with cheap, semi-autonomous, and disposable aircraft that can scout, jam, and conduct high-risk strikes while preserving China’s finite manned fleet. The US Air Force is playing the same game, currently developing autonomous Collaborate Combat Aircraft (CCA) to fly alongside the forthcoming F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter. 

When in 2025, China unveiled images of the Jiu Tian SS-UAV, a drone “mothership” with an 82-foot wingspan capable of releasing airborne drone swarms, it prompted the question: why isn’t the US building one?

At sea, China is launching unmanned surface vessels. The JARI USV, something of a mini-destroyer, is an AI-enabled platform, with sensors and weapons scaled down from larger warships, specifically designed to operate in swarms. Underwater, the HSU-001 autonomous submarine has already entered service and is believed to support reconnaissance and targeting for long-range missile systems.

America Cannot Cede the Drone Advantage to China

The strategic implications for China’s autonomous system investments are profound. Swarms overwhelm defenses through numbers rather than individual performance. Air defense systems capable of tracking and engaging a dozen or so incoming targets will be tasked with engaging hundreds of targets. Airbases with high-value runways, strategically invaluable for enabling force projection, could be cratered by a low-cost, low-tech drone system. And manned fighters, which take time to develop and build and cost upwards of many hundreds of millions of dollars per unit, could become less decisive against self-directing kamikaze drones that can be replaced by the hundreds for cheap. 

The deepest concern is that China is adopting autonomous systems with fewer constraints than the systems the US is adopting. The US still ostensibly insists on “human-on-the-loop” oversight for lethal decisions. China may not exercise similar caution—and may prioritize speed and efficiency in battlefield decision making. Beijing seems to be building sprawling fleets and squadrons of automated systems, designed to act quickly, with minimal human oversight, in a command culture that prizes aggression. It is unclear how Washington can answer this without putting its own safeguards at risk.