This drone could be the key to the return of supersonic aircraft
The technology to build drones continues to advance, and countries like China are showing their potential to be at the cutting edge of this market. This is evidenced, for example, by this powerful drone that can break the sound barrier and move at Mach 4, i.e. multiplying by 4 the speed required to break the sound barrier, which is typically 1 234 km per hour.
Twice the speed of Concorde
This commercial drone, recently unveiled in China, has a speed capable of four times the speed of the sound barrier and is an unmanned aircraft with high hopes for the hypothetical return of supersonic flight in the future. Since the Concorde flight was cancelled more than 20 years ago, such flights have been discontinued, and a possible return would be possible in a few years’ time, when technology will be much more advanced than it was at the beginning of the 21st century.
However, this drone will have to wait for testing, as the first tests are not scheduled to start until 2026. It is therefore a prototype that is still being worked on with a view to testing the unmanned aircraft next year. However, although we will have to wait until we see it in action, the mere fact that a drone capable of speeds of Mach 4 exists is still a very amazing and astonishing fact.
As for the characteristics of this unmanned aircraft, it is more than 7 metres long and weighs 1.5 tonnes, which means that it is much bigger and heavier than the drones that are usually talked about. Specifically, it can reach speeds of Mach 4.2 at an altitude of 20 kilometres. And if the first tests go as expected, the next project would be a supersonic commercial aircraft , which is expected to start testing in 2030.
A race where China has the edge
Despite the United States’ constant attempts to show itself as a major military contractor (although it is still unrivalled in terms of military trade), China has shown in recent years that, with a smaller budget, it can develop machines that are in many respects ahead of the Americans.
In fact, the most recent example is Deepseek, a programme launched at software level, which shows that artificial intelligence, with a much smaller investment, can achieve the same level of performance, but with minimal emissions and energy consumption, compared with the huge factories that brands such as Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI are opening up to increase their artificial intelligence’s brute-force performance.
