China’s new “mini drone carrier” signals a turning point in naval warfare — swapping costly supercarriers for swarming, expendable drone decks built to strike and survive.
This month, The War Zone (TWZ) reported that China has begun at-sea testing of its AR-500CJ uncrewed helicopter aboard a newly revealed vessel dubbed a “mini drone carrier”, marking a significant step in the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) naval drone integration efforts.
Footage aired by state-run CCTV-7 in October shows the AR-500CJ operating from a ship believed to have been launched in 2022 at the Jiangsu Dayang Marine shipyard. The vessel, approximately 100 meters long with a distinctive trapezoidal flight deck, is part of a growing fleet of open-decked platforms used for drone and electronic warfare training.
While the ship’s name remains unconfirmed, its design diverges from that of the larger CSSC-affiliated Zhong Chuan Zi Hao, previously speculated to serve similar functions.
The AR-500CJ, optimized for shipboard use, joins a broader ecosystem of navalized drones, including the stealthy GJ-11 unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) and AR-2000-based helicopters showcased in recent military parades.
These developments underscore China’s expanding investment in uncrewed maritime aviation, with platforms potentially supporting surveillance, signal relay and operational pairing with crewed warships.
Unlike repurposed drone carriers in Iran and Turkey, China’s design is purpose-built for unmanned operations, potentially enabling cost-effective surveillance, reconnaissance and light strike missions.
China’s push for mini drone carriers reflects concern over the growing vulnerability of traditional carriers. As noted by Nicola Bonsegna in a March 2025 Finabel report, traditional aircraft carriers may be vulnerable to hypersonic missiles and drones – endangering these increasingly expensive assets.
Bonsegna says that hypersonic missiles may leave little reaction time for a traditional carrier’s layered defenses, forcing them to operate from greater distances, as even a single hit could prove devastating.
As for drones, he adds that they can swarm carriers, forcing defenders to waste limited interceptor missiles and ammunition, while destroying precise spots such as radars, communication links and flight decks without necessarily sinking the target.
Given those dangers, he mentions that distributing an expendable air wing across drone-centric platforms that could be built at a lower cost and tolerate attrition may be the future of power projection.
In line with that, China’s focus on large carriers may leave it vulnerable. Those carriers may not be able to break out of the First Island Chain in a Taiwan contingency without coming into range of US and allied missiles and drones stationed in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.
Also, the Russia-Ukraine war has shown the effectiveness of even limited surface-to-air weapons against conventional aviation.
Dispersing naval airpower across smaller, more numerous drone carriers may help China offset Taiwan’s dense missile and air defenses. This approach also aligns with China’s massive shipbuilding and drone manufacturing strengths.
To illustrate those strengths, the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) pointed out in July 2023 that China’s shipbuilding capacity is over 232 times that of the US, and controls 90% of the commercial drone market, manufacturing most of the components needed to build them, such as batteries, airframes, radios, cameras, and screens.
Its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy, which leverages civilian production and technology for military purposes, may incentivize the production of mini drone carriers.
China’s development of drone carriers may also hint at the introduction of new naval tactics – ones that emphasize offensive power and standoff strikes to achieve a “fait accompli” in a Taiwan war scenario.
These new tactics could involve drone swarms launched from drone carriers and missile strikes from large warships such as the Type 055 cruisers and Type 052D destroyers, with traditional aircraft carriers providing fleet air defense – a possible role reversal at least for the opening stages of such a conflict.
In the opening stages of a Taiwan conflict, a multi-vector drone and missile attack could be the opening salvo of a decapitation strike that aims to neutralize Taiwan’s leadership and paralyze its resistance.
Those strikes could be followed up by a swift amphibious and airborne landing operation to seize control of strategic points such as ports, airfields, energy facilities, military bases and government facilities before the US and its allies could react.
While China’s mini drone carriers could contribute to a decapitation operation against Taiwan, they are not by themselves a war-winning weapon. Those small ships may be as vulnerable as large carriers to anti-ship missiles – provided Taiwan manages to ride out the decapitation strike and retaliate with its formidable arsenal of shore-based anti-ship missiles.
Should a Taiwan conflict enter an attritional phase, intense electronic warfare activity—similar to what is seen in the Russia-Ukraine war—may make carrier-based drone operations ineffective, similar to how improved Russian electronic warfare rendered Ukraine’s once-lauded Bayraktar drones ineffective.
While drone autonomy could mitigate the effects of electronic warfare, the technology cannot yet match human beings in terms of rapid decision-making and drones themselves have limited payload and endurance.
That situation may force China to rely on manned aircraft for missions over Taiwan, with the risk that they may be shot down by numerous, dispersed and concealed air defense systems.
While it is plausible that China may be exploring the drone carrier concept as an asymmetric means to compensate for its disadvantages vis-a-vis the US and its allies using emerging technologies, a drone carrier has never been tested in combat.
In contrast, the US has over a century of carrier warfare experience, an advantage China cannot match. However, the US, as a carrier warfare pioneer, had to go through the long and arduous trial-and-error process to become the vaunted force that it is today.
China may have the latecomer advantage when it comes to building its carrier force – it could simply observe and build off the experience of the US, with knowledge and technology narrowing but not closing the gap.
At the same time, China’s mini drone carriers are unlikely to replace its traditional carriers, despite the latter’s possible list of growing vulnerabilities. For one, these small ships won’t likely have the endurance of large carriers, keeping them confined to possibly within the First Island Chain.
Moreover, their size may impose limits on their power projection capabilities and restrict the number and types of drones carried. There’s also the matter of national prestige – a small drone carrier isn’t as imposing, reassuring or threatening to friends and enemies as a large aircraft carrier.
China’s shift to mini drone carriers aims to enhance survivability and distributed lethality, using shipbuilding and drone tech to counter the missiles and drone swarms that threaten large carriers.
The shift disperses airpower onto smaller, expendable platforms, sustaining offensive reach within the First Island Chain while reducing risk and cost – a pragmatic, though still unproven, adaptation to modern anti-access warfare.
