China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) just demonstrated its latest drone swarm tech on state TV, showing a single soldier controlling 200 units.

According to the South China Morning Post, the drones are launched from the Swarm I land vehicle, A.K.A the High Mobility Swarm Weapon System, which can simultaneously launch 48 fixed-wing drones that work together.

Each unit can then autonomously communicate with each other, allowing the entire swarm to fly in precise formation and divide tasks among themselves, like conducting multi-target reconnaissance and strike operations, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said in the report.

  • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Flying 200 drones at the same time is easy, having them do anything useful/effective is hard. Seems more like bluster than anything effective at this point in time, given AI systems aren’t really there yet for precise targeting.

    • thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      200 drones, each with a high explosive. Cast like a net. Each bomb has a radius of 10ft. So know you have 2000 square feet of carpet bomb, that you can somewhat direct.

      • gothic_lemons@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        That’s neat for like attacking dug in bases or large structures. But I feel like most front lines are held by a much smaller amount of ppl and equipment. Plus in Ukraine I think we’ve seen a return to trench like warfare to hide from drones. Seems like you might be blowing up a lot of nothing to get lucky on the few somethings you actually want to destroy. But hey if you got the money

    • Lag@piefed.world
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      1 day ago

      You can copy the code from Magic Select in Photoshop and you would be able to draw a shape over the targets on your phone with 1 finger. No need for AI.