Prominent Chinese Journalist Hu Xijin: In A War Of Drones Between U.S. And China, China Would Win – Our Drones Are Cheaper And Better Than America's

Prominent Chinese journalist Hu Xijin, formerly the Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese Global Times media outlet, spoke in a June 12, 2024 episode of his show "Hu Says" about the recent statement by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command commander Admiral Samuel Paparo that if the PLA invades Taiwan, the U.S. would launch its "Hellscape" strategy involving thousands of unmanned systems, with the goal of distracting the PLA. and buying itself time to respond. Hu said that while this strategy may sound intimidating at first, it is actually cowardice on the part of the U.S. because it does not dare deploy troops to actual combat. He also said that in a war of drones, China would certainly win, because its drones are domestically produced at a large scale and are much cheaper and more effective than American drones.

Hu Xijin: "Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command claimed recently that if the PLA 'invades' Taiwan, the U.S. would launch 'Hellscape' strategy, using thousands of unmanned systems, from surface vessels and submarines to aerial drones to distract PLA and buy the U.S. time to respond. This threat may sound intimidating at first, but it is actually a sign of cowardice: the U.S. military doesn't dare to dispatch troops to combat immediately and only dares to use unmanned systems to respond. Furthermore, the performance of U.S. drones in the Ukrainian battlefield is poor, much worse than Chinese drones.

"If there is a war of drone, the U.S. military would definitely lose.

"Chinese drones are leading in materials, batteries, and software, and China has a huge production capacity for drones, with the industrial chain located domestically.

"This has resulted in Chinese drones not only having excellent performance but also being very cheap. Chinese experts have compared the Rogue 1 drone used by the U.S. military to a similar Chinese drone and found that the Chinese drone cost only 5% of the price of the Rogue 1. China's advantage lies in its scale, and the U.S. military's attempt to confront China with their scale is clearly a wrong direction."