China’s submarine-launched drones can do more than the US military thinks: study

Amid reports of a new US military plan for an underwater drone release, scientists say China has already done it better

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The US is considering launching drones from submarines, but China has already developed the technology to do it better. Photo: Handout

Published: 3:00pm, 22 Jan 2025Updated: 2:36am, 23 Jan 2025

The US military is reportedly considering a tactic that involves deploying a submarine near the Chinese coast to release a large number of drones from under the water.

These drones would then form a swarm in the air and launch surprise attacks on the People’s Liberation Army fleet during any potential attempt to land in Taiwan, thereby reducing the need for US ships to get too close to the combat zone and risk being hit.

But there’s a twist: China has already turned this idea into reality, and test flights suggest its drones could accomplish much more than the Pentagon has envisioned for its own.

With help from China’s unmatched drone production chain, researchers with the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU) and the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre (CARDC) have developed the world’s first drone that can be launched by a submarine from the water, loop repeatedly between the sea and the sky, and eventually find its way back to the sub.

With a unique foldable wing design, the drone can “move across water-air media multiple times in a single journey”, thus significantly improving its concealment and survival abilities, the project team, led by NWPU associate professor Dong Changyin, wrote in a peer-reviewed paper published on December 31 in Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, a journal run by the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The drone has been named Feiyi by Dong’s team. In Chinese, fei means “fly”, while the character yi dates back more than 3,000 years and was used to describe the scene of a water bird spreading its wings and preparing to take off from the surface.

“It combines the advantages of efficient underwater navigation and high agility in the air,” Dong’s team wrote. “There will be great application potential in military fields such as marine reconnaissance, surveillance, strike and attack.”