China’s Type 055 destroyer can stop US fleet with unmanned ‘kill web’, war game suggests

One warrior skilfully defeating eight assailants is not a scenario that is only confined to a Bruce Lee kung fu movie – it can also happen in the grand theatre of naval warfare, according to a study by Chinese scientists.

A simulated battle by the team, set in the western Pacific, just a few hundred kilometres east of Taiwan, saw a Type 055 destroyer confront an advancing US naval fleet. China’s Type 055 is one of the largest warships in the world, but in the simulation the US fleet boasted eight Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

Accompanying the Type 055, two unmanned mother ships were commanded to move forward and release 32 drones and 14 unmanned boats. In response, the US fleet launched 32 Tomahawk and LRASM stealth anti-ship missiles, all aimed at the single Chinese warship. These cruise missiles are advanced but expensive, with an average price tag of more than US$3 million each.

Detecting the incoming missiles, the unmanned platforms cooperated with the Type 055 to fend off the attack. After the dust settled, the Chinese destroyer remained unscathed and the drone boats still had enough ammunition to withstand the next wave of offensives.

The war game, organised jointly by the China Ship Development and Design Centre (CSDDC) and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was a showcase of China’s ambition to change the nature of maritime conflict with large-scale use of unmanned weapons.

Drones and unmanned boats would give the Chinese military a highly efficient and low-cost “kill web”, said the project team, led by AI expert Professor Yu Minghui, in a peer-reviewed paper published on January 13 in the Chinese Journal of Ship Research.

  

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