China's 16-tonne 'drone mothership' makes first flight

Witness the dawn of a new era! China's domestically developed general-purpose large UAV, the "Jiutian" (named after the ancient concept of the highest skies), has achieved its first flight.

The Jiutian aerial universal platform is an unprecedented 16-tonne giant, designed for both civilian and multi-purpose missions. Its 6-tonne heavy-duty payload and modular design enable its use as an airborne carrier for crucial tasks: logistics transport, forest firefighting, meteorological intervention and disaster response.

But its capabilities extend far beyond. The Jiutian drone is viewed as a super-large attack-reconnaissance platform, capable of carrying various air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Crucially, it can deploy and manage a swarm of smaller unmanned combat aerial vehicles from its specialized mission bay, fundamentally changing the shape of modern warfare.

(Zhao Chenchen contributed to the story.)