Xing Long UAV
One of the few opportunities to see what China is doing in UAVs comes at the annual Air Show China. That was the case at the 7th Air Show in November 2008, but, as with previous Chinese exhibitions, what was real and what was illusion were difficult to separate. Nonetheless, it appeared to show, for the first time in public, the extent of China’s UAV effort more than a dozen aircraft from multiple state-run manufacturers.
Those numbers remain hard to validate, however.
Aerospace America has found references, with varying degrees of detail, to 41 primary UAVs and variants from 14 different manufacturers (including the air force). For this year, however, we could find updated information on only 23, and little or no verification on the remainder. It also is possible that some of these refer to one aircraft by multiple names, noting slightly different specifications. That also could account for the multiple aircraft with pictures or descriptions indicating they are downsized replicas, at least outwardly, of the U.S. Global Hawk.
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