Just when you thought the skies were crowded enough, China has successfully tested a 16-ton unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to function as an intelligent drone mothership. The Jiu Tian, or “High Sky,” completed its maiden flight in Pucheng county, Shaanxi province, confirming the dawn of the flying aircraft carrier is very much upon us. Developed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), this behemoth is built to haul a staggering 6 tons of payload, including swarms of smaller, autonomous drones.
First unveiled as the SS-UAV at Airshow China 2024, the Jiu Tian is no slouch in the performance department. AVIC claims the jet-powered drone has a ferry range of 7,000 km (about 4,350 miles), an endurance of 12 hours, and can operate at altitudes up to 15,000 meters (nearly 50,000 feet). With a 25-meter wingspan, it’s comparable in size to some World War II-era bombers, but instead of a human crew, its mission is to unleash a coordinated cloud of smaller, intelligent drones capable of seeking, evading, and striking targets on their own.
Why is this important?
The Jiu Tian represents a tactical shift from single, high-value drones like the US MQ-9 Reaper to a distributed, saturating attack model. Instead of one large, expensive target, air defense systems would face over 100 smaller, coordinated threats simultaneously. This “swarm carrier” concept is designed to overwhelm and confuse traditional radar and defense systems, making it a potent tool for asymmetric warfare, particularly in contested regions like the South China Sea. While the U.S. has explored similar concepts with programs like DARPA’s Gremlins, which aims to launch and recover drones from a C-130, China has now put a dedicated, purpose-built mothership into the air. Air combat planners, already losing sleep over hypersonic missiles, can now add “robot apocalypse launched from 50,000 feet” to their list of anxieties.
