New Delhi, India

The Chinese military has claimed that it has the capability to impose and maintain a blockade on an island, solely using drones. The claim has been made in a peer-reviewed paper in the Chinese academic journal Command Control & Simulation, published last month. 

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According to Chen Huijie, an engineer with the 92116 unit of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the project lead of the research, a simulation was run over an unnamed island with a narrow shape similar to Taiwan's terrain.

The objective of the mission was to form a blockade and control the island which had been fortified with a large number of air defence missile launchers, while hostile warships and submarines prowled the surrounding waters.

For the blockade, the PLA used four types of drones. The first batch of large and medium-sized drones with reconnaissance-and-attack capabilities were launched from mainland Chinese military bases. Their objective was to operate in all-weathers, detect and identify the mobile threats while eliminating them. 

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The second batch of small composite-wing reconnaissance drones and anti-radiation patrol drones were deployed by the PLA naval vessels. Their duty was to conduct close observation of concealed targets and eliminate enemy radars. 

Citing the benefit of using the drones, Chen's team wrote, "Unmanned equipment offers advantages including expendability, low cost and minimal casualties. Integrating unmanned clusters into a systematic war is anticipated to speed up the reconnaissance, identification, decision-making and attack cycles, consequently boosting overall combat efficacy.”

The report added that once the "scale and diversity of drone formations" reached a certain threshold, the military could effectively control the island and its surrounding waters by suppressing the island's armed forces whilst simultaneously thwarting external aid. 

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The release of the paper comes in the backdrop of the US military last month revealing its modus operandi of using swarms of drones in the Taiwan Strait in the case of a potential conflict. The strategy dubbed "Hellscape" is intended to stop the PLA troops from landing on Taiwanese land without having to put US soldiers on the forward line.  

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape,” Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, told The Washington Post in an interview published on June 10.

China claims self-ruled democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and under its top leader Xi Jinping, it has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under control.

(With inputs from agencies)