42,000 Chinese UAVs by 2023?

42,000 Chinese UAVs by 2023?

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X-47B-Gear-Up-2The United States estimates that China is expected to have by the year 2023 a massive amount of 42,000 unmanned aerial vehicles at a total cost of over $10 billion. According to the Americans, the UAVs – most of which will be under control of the Chinese navy – will be able to perform surveillance and attacks and may even be able to have aerial battles against other aerial vehicles. These claims were brought up in the latest Pentagon report which dealt with China’s military build-up.

AUS&R2015_E_728x90David Schaefer, an UAV expert from the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, claims that the United States’ predictions of 42,000 UAVs by 2023 are unrealistic. He says that chinese technology still has a long way to go before it can operate such a large amount of vehicles. Furthermore, the cyber threat that UAVs are exposed to is a major obstacle as it calls for developing more resistant computer programs to face it.

In 2013, China revealed that it is working on the development of four different UAVs, among them the Lijian – which is similar in shape to the American remote controlled stealth aircraft, the X-47B and the Yilong. Australian “News” claims that this isn’t the first time China has been copying ideas from other countries and building military tools based on them. The Pentagon mentions with concern that if China continues this military trend, the day that the U.S. will lose its technological advantage will not be very far.