Chinese drone maker Tengden says it has flown a new uncrewed cargo aircraft with a stated payload capacity of around 4,410 pounds (2,000 kilograms) for the first time. The company is primarily pitching the unnamed twin-engine turboprop design, said to be the largest cargo-carrying drone built in the country to date, to commercial operators. However, it has clear potential military applications, especially for helping get supplies to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces in remote locations like its island outposts in the South China Sea.
The successful maiden flight of the new Tengden cargo drone, lasting approximately 20 minutes, took place over the weekend from Zigong Fengming General Airport in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, according to Chinese state media. Now formally known as Sichuan Tengden Sci-tech Innovation Co., Ltd., the firm is nominally privately-owned, but has close links to the PLA.
The high-wing drone reportedly has a wingspan of almost 53 feet (16.1 meters) and is just over 15 feet (4.6 meters) high from the ground to the tip of its single vertical tail. It is also said to have almost 424 cubic feet (12 cubic meters) of internal payload space. The uncrewed cargo aircraft has tricycle landing gear and is designed to take off and land from traditional runaways.
How cargo is loaded and unloaded is not entirely clear, but images from the first flight suggest that the new Tengden drone has at least one relatively large side-opening door on the left side of the rear fuselage, as well as another smaller one toward the front.
Tengden does not appear to have released any details yet about the capabilities of the drone beyond its payload capacity, including what degree of autonomy it might have. The aircraft features a large white antenna dome on top of the forward end of the fuselage that would be used for satellite communications, giving it beyond-line-of-sight direct connectivity to controllers, even for relaying basic information. A cargo-carrying uncrewed aircraft would at least need to be able to navigate from point A to point B, which could be done autonomously or semi-autonomously using a pre-programmed route. More advanced autonomous flight systems would be required to enable the drone to take off and land and/or make dynamic route changes without human assistance. A launch and recovery element at its departure and landing locales could also be used to control the drone’s terminal operations, but that would greatly limit where it could be sent at any given time.
The new design from Tengen has emerged roughly two months after the state-run Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) unveiled its HH-100 cargo drone, with a stated payload capacity of some 1,540 pounds (700 kilograms). The HH-100’s maiden flight, which reportedly covered a distance of almost 22 miles (35 kilometers), but lasted an unknown amount of time, came on June 12.
AVIC has said its uncrewed cargo-carrying aircraft is expected to be able to cruise at a speed of 186 miles per hour (300 kilometers per hour), get up to an altitude of 16,400 feet (5,000 meters), and be able to fly 323 miles (520 kilometers) with a full load.
Tengden itself flew another cargo drone, the TB-001D Scorpion D, for the first time back in 2022, which you can read more about here. The four-engine Scorpion D has a greater wingspan than the new design, but is smaller overall and its stated payload capacity is around 3,000 pounds. Tengden has proposed an even bigger jet-powered twin-fuselage cargo drone design in the past. Other Chinese firms have been working on larger cargo-carrying drone designs, as well.
“Manufacturers in the world’s top drone-making nation are testing ever larger payloads… as China loosens airspace curbs and grants incentives to build up a low-altitude economy,” according to a report today from Reuters. “Its aviation regulator foresees a 2-trillion-yuan ($279-billion) industry by 2030, for a four-fold expansion from 2023.”
Chinese companies are already conducting uncrewed commercial cargo flights, including using Feihong-98 (FH-98) drones. The biplane FH-98 is an uncrewed derivative of the Yun-5B, itself a clone of the famous Soviet Antonov An-2, which first flew in 1947 and remains in service around the world in military and commercial roles. Unconfirmed reports of the first-ever crash of an FH-98 on China’s Hainan island emerged last week.
Tengden has already established itself as a manufacturer of medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) military drones capable of conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and kinetic strikes using small precision munitions. Several of Tengen’s MALE drone types are in active PLA service and have been conducting long-range missions around Taiwan and parts of Japan.
As already noted, Tengden as a company has a close relation with the PLA. It would not be hard to see how the Chinese armed forces could be interested in the company’s new design, as well as others like the TB0D Scorpion D and AVIC’s HH-100, for cargo-carrying missions. China does have a growing number of traditional cargo aircraft, including the increasingly capable Y-20 family. At the same time, China’s military already has established bases in a variety of remote and austere locations, often with limited runway capacity, such as its highly strategic island outposts across the South China Sea. Uncrewed platforms, which would also be cheaper to fly, could be very useful for routine resupply operations in locales where other crewed cargo planes might not be optimal or even capable of operating at all. Remote facilities on land in Western China might benefit from increased uncrewed aerial logistics capabilities. However, many of those locations can present altitude challenges for smaller aircraft, crewed or uncrewed.
In addition, the PLA has a clear interest in being able to expand its capacity to conduct expeditionary operations further and further from the Chinese mainland. Cargo drones could be part of a mix of capabilities that it could use to support those missions in the future. In an active conflict or other high-risk scenario, drones would present additional value as options for resupplying forces without putting a cargo aircraft’s crew at risk.
Elements of the U.S. military, in particular the U.S. Marine Corps, are also looking to field multiple tiers of cargo-carrying uncrewed aerial systems to help support future expeditionary and distributed operations. However, Tengden’s new design points to a capability tier, particularly in terms of range, beyond what American forces are currently looking at. Though there is growing interest in the sector, there has not been the same kind of burst in the development of larger, longer-ranged cargo drone designs within the U.S. aviation industry, either.
A drone with 424 cubic feet of internal space has definite potential to be adapted to other roles beyond cargo-carrying, as well. Tengden has demonstrated experience integrating various sensor systems and weapons onto its existing MALE product line. The company’s new design could potentially be configured as a launch platform for other payloads beyond munitions, including swarms of smaller drones.
It’s also interesting to note here that a partnership between Garuda Indonesia, a commercial airline in that country, and Beihang UAS Technology in China was announced in 2019 that centered on operating cargo-carrying versions of the Harbin BZK-005 drone. “The use of UAVs [uncrewed aerial vehicles] is an ideal option for the carrier to seize market demand and cargo revenue opportunities, particularly in connecting the remote regions with limited airport facilities such as those in Maluku, Papua, and Sulawesi,” Mohammad Iqbal, Garuda’s cargo and business development director, said at the time, according to FlightGlobal.
The BZK-005 was originally designed for ISR missions and is in active PLA use in that role. It is unclear how or if the Indonesian deal has progressed since then.
Still, Tengden’s new addition to the growing number of ever-larger cargo drones being offered by Chinese companies underscores the clear interest in that country and elsewhere around the globe in uncrewed aerial logistics capabilities. For the PLA, uncrewed cargo-carrying aircraft could be especially valuable for resupplying its forces in far-flung locales.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com