Coming Soon: Chinese Drones

China's drone ambitions were impossible to miss at the Zhuhai air show this week. Western defense officials and analysts counted more than 25 different Chinese unmanned aircraft designs on the exhibition floor — a record haul for a country that had shown its first concept drones at the same air show only four years earlier, and just a handful at the 2008 edition.

The message was unmistakable: China's military modernization was reaching into unmanned aviation, the one domain where the United States and Israel still held a clear lead.

Several of the 2010 models were configured to carry missiles. The standout was the WJ-600, a jet-powered design from the state-owned China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp — in theory faster than the propeller-driven American Predator and Reaper drones then flying over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Washington noticed. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2010 report to Congress flagged the PLA Air Force's growing inventory of reconnaissance and combat drones, and warned that China's medium- and high-altitude long-endurance programs would expand its options for long-range reconnaissance and strike.

The Zhuhai lineup was still mostly models and prototypes. But the direction of travel was no longer in doubt: the drone race was about to get a second superpower.