New Chinese AI-Enabled “Collaborative” Missile Appears to “Copy” US Weapon

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington DC) Apparent Chinese efforts to steal and essentially “copycat” US military platforms and technologies is a long-known and documented phenomenon discussed by Congress, US military leaders and senior weapons developers.  Congressional reports as far back as 2014 and numerous Pentagon studies in recent years have  raised questions and concerns about the potentially not-so-coincidental design similarities between the US F-35 and China’s J-31 5th-generation stealth fighter. China’s J-20 also appears to resemble elements of both the F-35 and the F-22, and the Pentagon has for quite some time sought to prevent Chinese cyber espionage and “theft” of sensitive US Military Technologies. 

Similarities with these larger 5th-gen stealth platforms, an apparent Chinese efforts to steal and replicate designs, have been widely recognized for years, yet this apparent Chinese copycat effort related to US military weapons, technologies and even tactics appears much more widespread than may be recognized. 

Beneath the more visible and widely known copycat possibilities such as those with the 5th-generation jets, there are a large number of Chinese weapons platforms which appear to be transparent rip-off or copycat efforts of US systems.  Evidence of this pattern can be seen across the full spectrum of weaponry from infantry carriers, to surveillance planes, drones and even aircraft carriers.  The pattern is that several years after a US military platform emerges, a similar looking Chinese one seems to arrive. Many believe this is not a coincidence, yet the full extent of technology theft and copycat weapons development may not be known.  For example, even if China succeeds in copying the design of a certain weapons system, that does not mean it operates with comparable technological and operational sophistication. Nonetheless, the pattern is observable and likely of great concern to the Pentagon. 

The copycat effort also appears to extend far beyond technology and may also include tactics, training and concepts of operation. For example, not long after the US conducted dual-carrier operations in the Pacific, China did the same thing with its own carriers. Chinese newspapers have also talked regularly about Chinese efforts to “network” the force and conduct multi-domain operations in manner quite similar to the US.  

The most recent potential copycat efforts can be found in Chinese reports about the emergence of new “loitering” munitions capable of “communications relay on the battlefield.”  China’s Global Times newspaper cites the emergence of a new “AR air-to-ground” missile capable of collaborative in flight data sharing in a manner nearly identical to a promising Air Force Research Laboratory program called “Golden Horde.”

In a manner quite similar to Golden Horde, the emerging Chinese weapon can reportedly perform “communications relay on the battlefield, radar disturbance and suppression, precision strikes against time-sensitive targets as well as battle damage evaluation,” a write up in the Chinese government-backed Global Times reports. 

While the Chinese paper only discusses the weapon in general terms, its description of the new “munition” sounds like a clear Golden Horde “rip-off” attempt. The Chinese article says the weapon can “collaborate” with other weapons. Its not clear what “collaborate” may mean in terms of the Chinese weapon, yet the paper does say the weapon can share information in flight, a technology which seems to closely mirror Golden Horde. This considered, it is by no means clear that China’s data-linked collaborative weapon, autonomy and guidance is by any means comparable to evolving US systems, however the Chinese paper at least reveals the intent or “ambition” to achieve Golden Horde-like in flight weapons “collaboration” and a Switchblade-like ability to “loiter” and strike using a kind of ISR or surveillance capability.