Chinese platforms are not developed in a vacuum. China’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) programs owe a major debt to technology recovered from crashed drones in China and Vietnam. For much of the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it was subject to surveillance by other countries, and at the same time, lacked the capability to consistently monitor areas of strategic interest to it. During the period of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict, U.S. aircraft frequently intruded, intentionally or otherwise, into Chinese airspace. Chinese sources reportedly claim 383 U.S. violations of Chinese airspace between 1964 and 1968. Of particular note, between 1964 and 1969 the Chinese detected at least 97 American UAV overflights. In addition, Taiwanese U-2 pilots reportedly flew roughly 102 missions over mainland China between 1962 and 1974. This experience was a major driver of China’s surface-to-air missile and interceptor aircraft programs. It also prompted the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to attempt to develop its first airborne early warning aircraft, the KJ-1, beginning in 1969, though the combination of a shifting strategic environment and technological hurdles realigned priorities toward ground-based early warning.
Although the United States and Taiwanese aircraft are not known to deliberately enter China’s airspace anymore, Chinese officials regularly complain about U.S. reconnaissance flights along China’s coast over China’s exclusive economic zone, but still over international waters. More recently, according to reporting by Aviation Week and Space Technology, the U.S. Air Force has been regularly deploying its RQ-180 stealthy, high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) reconnaissance UAV around China’s periphery. Aside from the desire to monitor foreign surveillance flights over or near Chinese territory, Chinese observers of U.S. involvement in the First Gulf War and Kosovo conflict concluded that the PLA needed C4ISR aircraft to be able to effectively coordinate air and naval forces. The performance of U.S. cruise missiles further highlighted the need to be able to field airborne early warning radars capable of detecting these threats.
According to China’s 2019 Defense White Paper, China’s National Defense in the New Era, “War is evolving in form towards informationized warfare [信息化战争], and intelligent warfare [智能化战争] is on the horizon.” As a result, China’s short-term goals (by 2020) include “significantly enhanced informationization.” The proliferation of sensors and linkages between them and users will define these two stages.