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.
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