If you thought the skies were already getting a bit cramped, China’s latest aeronautical feat might just tip you over the edge. In a move that feels ripped straight from a mid-budget sci-fi blockbuster, Beijing has successfully flight-tested a 16-tonne unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to act as an “intelligent drone mothership.”
The Jiu Tian, or “High Sky,” recently completed its maiden flight in Pucheng county, Shaanxi province, effectively announcing that the era of the airborne aircraft carrier has officially arrived. Developed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), this jet-powered behemoth is engineered to haul a staggering 6-tonne payload, including entire swarms of smaller, autonomous drones.
First breaking cover as the SS-UAV at Airshow China 2024, the Jiu Tian is certainly no slouch when it comes to the numbers. AVIC claims the drone boasts a ferry range of some 4,350 miles (7,000 km), a 12-hour endurance, and a service ceiling of roughly 49,000 feet (15,000 metres). With a 25-metre wingspan, it’s roughly the size of a Second World War bomber—only instead of a human crew and a hold full of iron bombs, its mission is to unleash a coordinated, “intelligent” cloud of mini-drones capable of hunting, evading, and striking targets with terrifying autonomy.
Why this matters
The Jiu Tian signals a massive tactical pivot. We are moving away from the era of single, high-value assets—like the American MQ-9 Reaper—and towards a model of distributed, saturating attacks. Instead of presenting air defences with one large, expensive target to track, the Jiu Tian can vomit out over 100 smaller, coordinated threats simultaneously.
This “swarm carrier” concept is specifically designed to overwhelm and confuse traditional radar and defence systems, making it a potent tool for asymmetric warfare—particularly in heavily contested regions like the South China Sea. While the U.S. has been tinkering with similar ideas via DARPA’s “Gremlins” programme (which aims to launch and recover drones from a C-130 transport plane), China has gone a step further by putting a dedicated, purpose-built mothership into the air.
Air combat planners, who are already losing sleep over the threat of hypersonic missiles, can now add “robot apocalypse launched from 50,000 feet” to their list of 3:00 AM anxieties.
