How China and U.S. are racing to win the game of drones, from the sky to the sea

Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Initiative at Brown University in the U.S., said Beijing has “a huge geographical advantage” that plays into every aspect of a hypothetical war in the region.

“I do believe it would affect drones—that is, China could employ probably 100 times or more drones into the battle,” he said.

“They can have a very complex deployment scheme that they’re not dependent on any single kind of logistic stream or basing area, [so] they can really spread their forces out and employ them from different factors … in huge numbers.”

As the world’s largest drone manufacturer, China would also be able to produce “huge quantities of high-quality drones” and have “an innovation advantage on AI, an ability to move innovative weapons forward more quickly”, Goldstein said.