China’s High-Altitude Ghosts: HALE Strike UAVs That Can Reach Into Contested Airspace

Video with Chinese subtitles: China’s High-Altitude Ghosts: HALE Strike UAVs That Can Reach Into Contested Airspace 影片有中文字幕: 中國高空幽靈：可進入爭議空域的HALE無人機

Night over the East China Sea. 03:06 hours.

Out on the horizon, a constellation of sensors at a forward base records a faint thermal trail, nothing like a fighter, nothing like a cruise missile.

Radar sweeps return only sporadic, low-RCS blips that vanish in the clutter. Controllers frown at their screens.

On the carrier deck 250 kilometers away, sailors sip coffee, unaware. A routine patrol launches. Fighter jets climb and search. Nothing appears on their radars.

But minutes later, a remotely piloted aircraft drops a precision glide weapon onto a forward refueling node, guided, silent, surgically accurate. Communications die. Fuel fires bloom.

東海上空的夜色。凌晨3點06分。

地平線上，前方基地的一系列感測器記錄到一道微弱的熱尾跡，既不像戰鬥機，也不像巡航飛彈。

雷達掃描只會回到零星的低雷達反射截面光點，消失在雜亂的景像中。管制員皺著眉頭盯著螢幕。

250公里外的航空母艦甲板上，水兵小口喝著咖啡，渾然不知。例行巡邏開始了。戰鬥機爬升搜索。雷達上什麼也沒發現。

但幾分鐘後，一架遙控飛機將一枚精準滑翔武器投擲到前方加油站，武器採用導引，無聲無息，精準度極高。通訊中斷。燃油燃燒殆盡.