By David Lague
HONG KONG, March 27 (Reuters) - China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, according to a new report by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Satellite imagery of these airfields from the February report, “China Airpower Tracker,” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese air force in the 1960s. Since their conversion
to drones, these aircraft have been identified at five bases in Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, according to the report from the Arlington-Virginia based institute.
Senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute, J. Michael Dahm, said China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has deployed an estimated 200 or more obsolete fighters converted to drones to airfields near the Taiwan Strait.
These jets-turned-drones would fly into targets in the opening phase of an assault on Taiwan, Dahm, a former U.S. naval intelligence officer, told Reuters. They would be used more like cruise missiles than autonomous or remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
“They will attack Taiwan, U.S. or allied targets in large numbers, effectively overwhelming air defenses,” said Dahm. He compiled the data for the report from open source intelligence and commercial satellite imagery.
China dominates the global commercial drone market. It is also investing heavily in military drone technologies as it builds the firepower it needs to seize control of Taiwan by force if necessary. The converted drones identified in the Mitchell Institute report are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles, modern fighters, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and swarms of modern UAVs, according to experts on air warfare.
Beijing views Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under control. Taiwan rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims, saying only the island's people can decide their future. This month, the U.S. intelligence community said its assessment is that China is not currently planning to invade Taiwan in 2027. That contrasted with the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military power late last year that said China “expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027.”
The key purpose of these drones is “to exhaust Taiwan’s air defense systems in the first wave of an attack,” a senior Taiwanese security official said. To prevent China from “striking high-value targets, we will inevitably face the cost-efficiency issue of using expensive missiles to intercept them at a distance.” In a report to parliament this week, Taiwan's defense ministry outlined plans to rapidly acquire a new generation of counter‑drone systems.
Taiwan's defense ministry referred Reuters to a 2022 report by its think tank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, which referred to these drones as “a form of asymmetric warfare that cannot be ignored.”
China’s defense ministry and Taiwan Affairs Office didn’t respond to questions for this story. The Pentagon also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In a Taiwan conflict, China could launch a “large attack wave” of strike aircraft, missiles flying on different trajectories, and fast and slow drones, said Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at Griffith University in Australia and a retired Australian air force group captain who has worked at the Pentagon.
“There would be a lot of diverse things all coming at the same time,” he said. “It would be an air defense nightmare.”
These drones don’t rank among China’s most threatening, advanced UAVs, but they would be costly to combat. The small, high-speed interceptor drones that Ukraine has been fielding in its war with Russia would be ineffective in shooting them down, said Layton. “Those J-6s would need a proper expensive missile.”
The protracted conflict in Ukraine and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran have demonstrated that drones are now a crucial element of modern warfare. Some can be built in large numbers, deployed in mass formations and rapidly replaced after battlefield losses.
China is developing new UAVs, including a stealth attack drone that experts say would operate from an aircraft carrier. Military attaches and security analysts say China is already testing the use of drones in deception operations in potential rehearsals of a Taiwan invasion.
The twin-engined J-6 was derived from the 1950s-era Soviet Mig-19 fighter. This jet and other Soviet-derived aircraft formed the core of China's fighter fleet until the mid-1990s, according to the U.S. Air Force's Air University.
Dahm estimated more than 500 of these aircraft have been converted to drones. The drone version of the J-6 is designated the J-6W.
The Chinese air force in September exhibited one of these converted fighters at the Changchun Air Show in northeast China. On an information board displayed next to the drone, it was described as a J-6 UAV, according to a photograph from the air show published by China’s Ministry of National Defense. “This aircraft is a modified version of the J-6 fighter jet,” the information board said.
The fighter’s cannons and other equipment were removed and it was fitted with an automatic flight control system and terrain matching navigation technology, according to the board. The UAV made its first successful flight in 1995 and could be used as attack aircraft or a training target for fighter pilots, anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles or radar operators, the board said.
The Chinese airfields closest to the Taiwan Strait where J-6 drones are based would be vulnerable to counter-attack from Taiwan and its allies in a conflict, Dahm said.
“The idea is to launch all the drones in the first hours of a PLA operation,” he said.
(Reporting by David Lague. Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in Taipei. Graphics by Catherine Tai. Edited by Peter Hirschberg.)
