FH-97A Chinese Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

The FH-97A Chinese Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can accompany manned aircraft and provide it with intelligence, information and firepower support, made its debut at the Airshow China 2022 held in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province in early November, with its chief designer saying that this new technology is expected to greatly change conventional air combat. Based on this cutting-edge combat concept, the FH-97A loyal wingman drone is designed as a new type of autonomous UAV formation system. It can form a dense formation and efficiently coordinate with manned combat aircraft to perform air superiority operations, air defense suppression, and air escort missions, the Global Times learned from the drone's developers. It can solve not only the problems of limited service scale of manned aircraft and aging aircraft, but also build a pattern of unmanned cooperative combat. The FH-97A can carry out collaborative reconnaissance with special mission aircraft, as it can detect potential threats and provide early warning by flying ahead of the manned aircraft, or it can also extend the reconnaissance time and scope taking advantage of its long endurance and range. When cooperating with a fighter jet, the FH-97A can carry out air defense suppression by carrying electronic reconnaissance and jamming payloads and conduct close-in reconnaissance and interference tasks, which can allow the fighter to penetrate the enemy defense and also constantly paralyze the enemy's air defense system.