Is the world’s first all-powerful unmanned aircraft carrier delivered to the U.S. Navy’s expected unmanned combat fleet or will it appear in China first? | blog post

The report confirmed the rumor that this is a “sea-air submersible” all-round unmanned aircraft carrier.

Chen Da, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Southern Ocean Laboratory, revealed several important information in an interview.

First of all, the unmanned embodiment of “Zhuhai Cloud” can now navigate autonomously with the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) operating system.

Chen Dake introduced that “Zhuhai Cloud” tested the autonomous navigation performance and the steps of unmanned boat retraction in this professional sea trial. “For the first time, a smart ship can sail autonomously for 12 hours continuously, realize obstacle avoidance, plan paths, etc., so the effect is very good, and it fully meets our original design indicators.”

The US “Sea Hunter” unmanned anti-submarine.

This first means that “Zhuhai Cloud” has the ability to navigate autonomously, and can avoid sea obstacles and plan paths by itself. This is the most prominent capability of the “Sea Hunter” unmanned anti-submarine that the U.S. Navy has boasted for a long time. However, compared with the “Sea Hunter” with a displacement of only over 100 tons, “Zhuhai Cloud” is much larger. It is 88.5 meters long, 14.0 meters wide, and 6.1 meters deep. Its design displacement is about 2,100 tons, so it sails at sea It is also much more difficult to control autonomously. In this sense, China is already at the forefront of the world in the field of autonomous driving of unmanned ships.

The US “Power” website admits that “Zhuhai Cloud” is widely regarded as “the world’s first scientific research ship with remote control and autonomous navigation functions in open waters”, and its customized AI operating system can support it as a mothership for various unmanned platforms . The US media also said, “In order for the ship to navigate autonomously in the busy port area, the crew will operate the ship’s navigation system by remote control, or at least have the ability to monitor during these complex navigation phases.” It is said that the requirements for artificial intelligence technology are quite high.

The largest unmanned ship in the United States is far inferior to the “Zhuhai Cloud”.

Secondly, Chen Dake also revealed that the ship has a spacious rear deck, which can carry a variety of air, sea, and submarine unmanned system equipment with different observation instruments, and can perform comprehensive marine surveying and mapping, ocean observation, marine inspections, and some surveys and samples. Marine survey missions.

This is the second important feature of the unmanned “Zhuhai Cloud”: it can carry a variety of unmanned platforms at sea, underwater and in the air to perform complex observation tasks. It is no exaggeration to say that it is an “all-round unmanned aircraft carrier”.

According to earlier public reports, “Zhuhai Cloud” can deploy various unmanned systems in batches in the target sea area, and carry out task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional dynamic observation of specific targets. It helps to change the traditional ocean observation mode, obtain real-time three-dimensional ocean observation data, and improve the efficiency of ocean observation.

The U.S. nuclear submarine USS Connecticut crashed into a seamount in the South China Sea.

The US media linked these characteristics of “Zhuhai Cloud” with military uses.

According to the “Power” website, this unmanned mothership can collect “three-dimensional dynamic observation” data by virtue of dozens of sets of unmanned detection systems it carries, which is especially important for the Chinese navy. The painful experience of the U.S. Navy’s “Connecticut” nuclear submarine colliding with submarine mountains in the South China Sea has proved that highly accurate underwater navigation data is particularly important for the safety of submarine navigation. And “with the accurate topographic map of the seabed provided by ‘Zhuhai Cloud’, Chinese submarines will be able to improve mission planning and navigation flexibility.”

In addition, the report also links “Zhuhai Cloud” with other Chinese UAV/UV/UUV collaborative operations. The US media believes that “Zhuhai Cloud” or other similar ships can theoretically act as a coordinated command center for unmanned boat groups. As early as the end of 2021, Chinese unmanned ship companies used six high-speed unmanned ships to conduct “rapid interception, siege and expulsion of sea intruders” tests. Its “Dynamic Cooperative Countermeasure Technology,” or “swarm” technology, could allow drone ships to engage enemy targets in an autonomously coordinated manner without human control, the report said.

It can be seen that although the “Zhuhai Cloud” is only a scientific research vessel for marine surveys, the huge technological content behind it, especially the breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology, has made even the United States nervous.

It is reported that these artificial intelligence technologies are theoretically expected to be quickly transplanted to other platforms. According to the analysis, in the near future, the U.S. Navy’s long-awaited unmanned combat fleet may first appear in China.