China is converting its obsolete supersonic warplanes into attack drones and stationing them at air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, in fresh signs of its preparedness for a military escalation against Taipei, according to a new report.
The J-6 fighters that were first flown with the Chinese air force in the 1960s, have now been modified into attack drones, the satellite imagery of the airfields show, according to a report by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The images show what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters.
These aircraft have been identified at five bases in Fujian province and one in Guangdong since their conversion, the report titled “China Airpower Tracker” showed.
Experts monitoring the increasing aerial progress by China’s military said that Beijing has deployed an estimated 200 or more obsolete fighters by converting them into drones at airfields near the Taiwan Strait, where it has been routinely staging military drills using People's Liberation Army (PLA) warplanes and PLA Navy warships.
These jets-turned-drones will fly into targets in the opening phase of an assault on Taiwan, said J Michael Dahm, senior fellow at the Arlington-Virginia based think tank.
The twin-engined J-6 was derived from the 1950s-era Soviet Mig-19 fighter. According to the US Air Force’s Air University, this jet and other Soviet-derived aircraft formed the core of China's fighter fleet until the mid-1990s.
These revamped J-6s can be used more like cruise missiles than autonomous or remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), he said, adding that more than 500 of these aircraft have been converted to drones.
“They will attack Taiwan, US, or allied targets in large numbers, effectively overwhelming air defences,” Mr Dahm said. The drone version of the J-6 is designated the J-6W, he added.
He added that the Chinese airfields closest to the Taiwan Strait where J-6 drones are based would be vulnerable to counter-attack from Taiwan and its allies in a conflict.
“The idea is to launch all the drones in the first hours of a PLA operation,” he said.
China claims sovereignty over the self-governed island and seeks to “reunite” it with the mainland by force, if necessary. Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims and maintains that only the island's people can decide its future.
These drones could serve a part in Beijing’s growing mix of airpower weapons including bombers with sand-off missiles, modern fighters, ballistic and cruise missiles and a swarm of modern drones, experts have said.
According to a senior Taiwan security official, these Chinese drones carry a key purpose: “to exhaust Taiwan’s air defence systems in the first wave of an attack”.
To prevent China from “striking high-value targets, we will inevitably face the cost-efficiency issue of using expensive missiles to intercept them at a distance,” they said.
After initially claiming that China is gearing up to fully invade Taiwan by 2027, the US intelligence community last week retracted the claim and said that Beijing is not currently planning to invade its smaller neighbour.
Just late last year, the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military power had said China “expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027”.
Taiwan has continued working on its defence and warned that other countries in the Asia-Pacific would be next if Beijing manages to invade his self-governed island. In a report to parliament this week, the Taiwanese defence ministry has shared a plan to rapidly acquire a new generation of counter-drone systems.
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