What China WANTED was a press hit like this, making them look big and important on the world stage. There was no need for surveillance here at all. They knew exactly what that cruiser was doing, the whole point of that naval mission was, after all, to say "Hey China! These waters aren't yours! Look at our giant cruiser sailing around with impunity!".

The only reason that might be true is if no one read the article (so, depressingly plausible).

Quotes like “ The US has hundreds of comm satellites... China only has dozens... hampers ability to stream high quality imagery... or even control the uav

...a total of seven Xhialong have been seen at three sites...

China only recently deployed their Xhialong’s, while the US has had Global Hawks in air since the 1990s

The Pentagon employs tens of thousands of UAV operators, it will take China a long time to catch up

China has trouble producing military grade engines for helicopters, planes, uavs... “

Didn’t really paint a great picture of China’s military capabilities to me. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

It is of course always in the best interest of a country to make it seem as if its military is much better organised and more well-equipped than its adversaries. In other words, I'd take such statements with a grain of salt.

More likely the US has known about the Xianglong since around the time that its development began. It has been public knowledge that they were working on it for at least 13 years now. Its capabilities would be very unlikely to surprise at this point. Globally the UAV space is well understood and mostly incremental, nobody has unleashed anything too surprising or radical in the field since the Global Hawk 20 years ago. The odds are the US military understands well what China's UAVs can and can't do, without requiring these flights to inform that particular aspect. The Navy probably appreciated getting an opportunity to track it however.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou_Soar_Dragon

A thought struck me while reading this piece. That these UAVs make the world a lot safer.

Countries can surveil, do reconnissance, and remotely monitor better without risking human life. This enhances security and stability because there are less surprises.

Also if a drone gets shot down, even though it's expensive loss and the gesture is hostile, it's not so hostile that a lethal response is warranted in return. We saw this play out in the mass media recently.

I guess what I'm saying is that I never thought about these machines like this before. Even though they are military hardware, they are conflict-reducing military hardware.

In the same way we discourage the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction maybe we should encourage nations to develop high-level military-grade UAV capabilities?

    > ...these UAVs make the world a lot safer.

Except that there are other UAV's that launch missiles and kill people in response to incomplete intelligence. Missiles or not, taking people out of the line of fire through use of robotics also lowers the threshold for non-diplomatic responses and provocations and creates a "slippery-slope" effect for involving military.

There are consequences to this. Drone warfare during the Obama administration has been cited as an accelerant for radicalization. Drones promote the impression that the US isn't willing to "put skin in the game" by sending real pilots. Some have leveraged this into a message that the US is cowardly and all that is needed is to stand up to the drones because they're not going send soldiers when the time comes. Regardless of whether that's true or not, it creates a more dangerous situation for everyone involved.

Very good points. On balance I'm not so sure now.

there are just as many people involved in shooting missiles from drones as from manned craft

"Skin in the game" was clearly meant to imply people who were in the line of fire, not 9-5ers in Washington manning their xbox controllers.

You're right about that.

Ironically, however, drone operators seem to suffer disproportionately from PTSD. Firing missiles at people while sitting in a 9-5 cubicle, and probably tasked with keeping up "KPI's", I imagine, violates any sane person's sense of morality to the core.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/magazine/veterans-ptsd-dr...

Maybe they should think about finding a job that aligns with their morals better.

It's hard for me to feel that sorry for people who later feel bad after being willing participants in killing people despite what must be their own morals against it.

Having said that I don't want anyone to suffer PTSD, but it's much worse for the families on the other end of the war machine.

nobody but targets are in the line of fire when americans blow up villages in waziristan or whatever

> UAVs make the world a lot safer.

Sweet Jesus, no.

The next world war will be started with drones. Without a bodycount, many politicians are ok with initiating conflict.

After all, who's gonna complain? No press, no moms, no VA patients - at first.

Until there's a loser, who gets "The Terminator", but for real.

Another scenario where drones are destabilizing is for surprise attacks. The most successful aerial attacks have been against bases (Pearl Harbor, Taranto, Egypt.) Drones would make planning first strikes even easier with real-time ground truth.

> Without a bodycount

Only if you ignore all the inevitable civilian casualties.

No, that could never happen... /s

See: Wikileaks Iraq body count.

I don't think so. The US has used drones to bomb a lot of people without having to risk their own personnel and reduces the backlash from its own public.

Yes, let the robots fight instead of humans

Let those old farts who start the wars fight it out.

No, the Iranian downing very nearly led to open war, it was only Trumps genuine unwillingness to start killing that prevented it, no other part of the military apparatus showed any restraint over an unmanned drone.

Eh, Iran can't afford a war with the United States without a LOT of assistance from other countries. Iran's entire GDP is 58.6% of the proposed DoD budget for 2020.

In fact, Iran's military budget is less than NASA's budget (19.6 v 21.5 billion). For that matter if we look at 1.3 million people active duty military in the United States, and assume an E1 base salary of 18,384 a year that's more than Iran's entire military budget.