Chinese military has started research on developing unmanned armoured vehicles including battle tanks for deployment in future battles as part of an ambitious plan to modernise its defences.
"Unmanned ground vehicles will play a very important role in future ground combat. Realising that, we have begun to explore how to refit our armoured vehicles into unmanned ones," said Major General Xu Hang, president of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Armoured Forces Engineering in Beijing was quoted in the official media here today.
"Though we have yet to develop unmanned tanks, I think it is an irreversible trend that computers will gradually replace humans to control those fighting machines," he said while conducting demonstration of an unmanned battle tank and other vehicles.
In June, China North Industries Group Corp, one of the nation's major defence technology and equipment contractors, founded China's first research centre dedicated to the development of unmanned ground vehicles in Beijing, state run China Daily reported today.
Meng Hong, deputy director of the centre said the US had invented a series of unmanned ground vehicles and put them to use in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding they enable military personnel to investigate suspicious objects or perform other tasks in dangerous scenarios from a safe distance.
She said the Chinese engineers have developed some unmanned military vehicles, but they have not been widely used by the PLA.
China has a full product chain of tanks and armoured fighting vehicles, boasting domestically developed engines and weapons that are as advanced as those used by Western militaries, the Daily quoted a Chinese military official as saying.
"Our ground forces have been upgrading their tanks and armoured vehicles over the past years. Their new tanks are way better than what they had used since the 1960s in terms of manoeuvrability, firepower, control systems and users' comfort," Academy official Colonel Yu Kuilong said.
The academy has made huge strides in technological innovation by developing cutting-edge driving and shooting simulators, which have enabled junior-grade students to gain experience of what it's like to operate a tank or armoured fighting vehicle before they touch real ones, Senior Colonel Li Shengli, chief of the academy's training department said.
The academy spends at least 200 million yuan (USD 32 million) a year on the research and development of new armaments, Xu, the general, said.
