How quickly is China learning from the Ukraine war’s latest drone tactics?

China is running the most systematic effort of any outside power to learn from the drone war in Ukraine, with military and defence-industry analysts typically writing up new battlefield techniques within about four months, according to a new analysis.

But it usually took a year or more before those lessons showed up publicly in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) training, equipment or force structure, Lilly Min-Chen Lee and Kateryna Bondar wrote in a commentary published on October 7 by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Chinese analysts treated the conflict as a “living textbook”, the authors noted. They also described 2024 as “year one of world drone war”, when both Russia and Ukraine were fielding drones at sufficient scale to show how they were reshaping the modern battlefield.

The lessons drawn by China go beyond immediate tactics. Chinese analysts have also looked at the economics of mass-produced drones, ways to shorten the kill chain, fibre-optic first-person-view (FPV) drones that are harder to jam, and multiple layers of defence against sea and aerial drones.