China Accelerates AI Air Warfare as US Pursues Golden Dome Defence

Beijing, China: In a quiet hangar somewhere in China's vast military complex, engineers monitor screens showing real-time footage of a J-20 stealth fighter flying in formation with a GJ-11 stealth attack drone. The video, released to mark the People's Liberation Army Air Force's 76th anniversary, represents China's public debut of manned-unmanned teaming technology, signalling the country's determined push into AI-powered air warfare.

Military analyst Song Zhongping told the South China Morning Post that the three aircraft could form a coordinated combat triad combining stealth penetration and electromagnetic suppression. The GJ-11, first revealed at the 2019 National Day parade and seen again in 2025 with redesigned tail fins, functions as both a stealth strike drone and a "loyal wingman." While state media claimed the drone could coordinate autonomously through a digital battlefield network, Song cautioned that the technology remains in a training phase.

Across the Pacific, the United States is racing to operationalise its own version of pilot-drone integration. The War Zone revealed in July 2025 that the US Air Force plans to make the F-22 Raptor the first operational controller of Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones under its Crewed Platform Integration programme. According to the report, 143 combat-capable F-22s will be equipped with tablet-based interfaces and supporting hardware costing about $86,000 each, allowing pilots to direct autonomous loyal wingmen via secure data links.

The initiative aligns with broader CCA development efforts involving General Atomics and Anduril, with plans to field 100 to 150 Increment 1 drones and eventually expand to 1,000 across future phases. At roughly $25-30 million each—far below the $81 million cost of an F-35—CCAs are intended to augment crewed fighters by extending range, absorbing attrition, and saturating enemy defences.

Meanwhile, China has unveiled plans for a nationwide missile defence network, responding swiftly after US President Donald Trump vowed in May 2025 to build the "Golden Dome," a multi-layered shield designed to intercept airborne threats before they reach American territory. China's proposed radar-backed anti-missile system was first outlined in an academic paper published by Modern Radar, a research unit of the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, in July this year.

According to the paper, the system offers a "distributed early-warning detection big-data platform" that fuses space-based sensors, satellites, airborne systems, sea and ground radars into a unified network. The system aims to deliver real-time early-warning awareness at a nationwide scale, enabling high-speed data integration to detect and track complex missile threats, enhance decision timelines and support large-scale simultaneous threat monitoring.

The paper claims that the system can track up to 1,000 incoming missiles simultaneously, drawing data from satellites, ground-based and over-the-horizon radar, optical sensors, maritime platforms, airborne early-warning aircraft and orbital reconnaissance assets.

"China has moved a step ahead in the global missile defence layout with its distributed early-warning platform, outpacing the US Golden Dome," a Guangdong-based commentator using the pseudonym "Humanity Blues" said in an article. "The Chinese prototype system has already undergone testing and delivery to the military, while the US remains at the framework design stage, with its data architecture still being mapped out."

The Pentagon appointed Space Force General Michael Guetlein to lead the Golden Dome effort, targeting operational status by 2028. Officials acknowledge that the chief challenge lies in integrating sensors, interceptors and command networks across military and commercial space assets.

At the 2025 Defense in Space Conference in London, space defence experts delivered a blunt warning: The West is running out of time. China is accelerating space-linked missile defence, Russia is hardening counter-space capability and Western deterrence has entered an era defined by speed of deployment, not strategy papers.

"Golden Dome is the most consequential shift in strategic affairs in a generation. This is not an upgrade cycle, it is a strategic reset, and the point at which space stops being a support layer and becomes the centre of gravity for deterrence and conflict," said Gabriel Elefteriu, senior fellow at the Council on Geostrategy.

Yet neither side is without constraints. An April 2025 report for the China Aerospace Studies Institute by John Chen and Emilie Stuart notes that China's MUM-T concept remains rudimentary and unproven in practice. They cite PLA analysts who warn that large-scale operations risk command-and-control confusion and depend on vulnerable datalinks, while centralised command and limited training restrict autonomy.

Travis Sharp, in his April 2025 assessment for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, also warns that the US programme faces its own bottlenecks. He writes that CCA-enabled MUM-T will stall unless development, deployment, and employment advance together—three steps that currently lag behind earlier planning and resource phases.

China's J-20–GJ-11 pairing shows tangible progress in linking stealth aircraft and drones, but limited autonomy and top-down control still cap combat payoff. The US is moving to operationalise control via retrofitting F-22s and early CCA prototypes, yet cost, design, basing, sustainment and employment shortfalls remain unresolved. In a potential Taiwan conflict, the edge goes to whichever side can convert these trials into a resilient, scalable, and attritable human-machine strike network.

China | Military,Technology,Defence | |