A video showing a demonstration of a Chinese drone acting as a mini dropship for a robot dog armed with a machine gun has emerged online.
The footage begins with a shot of the drone as it approaches the rooftop of a building in a nondescript urban area with the compact armed robot dog being carried under the drone’s frame. The drone, acting as a robotic dropship of sorts, then lands atop the roof, releases the robodog, and flies away. Shortly thereafter the robodog unfurls from its folded position and begins navigating its new surroundings with what looks to be a Chinese QBB-97 light machine gun (designated as Type 95 LGM in the United States) mounted on its back.
https://youtu.be/xX72FO7F53s
The Weibo account, which is verified by the platform, has the username ‘Kestrel Defense Blood-Wing’ and shared the video on the site accompanied with a description that offers limited but nonetheless additional information. The account seems to be directly affiliated with the Chinese Kestrel Defense company, also called China Kestrel Defense in some instances, although it isn’t clear what exactly ‘Blood-Wing’ is in reference to. It is important to note as well that all of the details extracted from Weibo have been machine translated from Chinese to English, meaning some terms and phrases may not be accurately communicated.
“War dogs descending from the sky, air assault, Red Wing Forward heavy-duty drones deliver combat robot dogs, which can be directly inserted into the weak link behind the enemy to launch a surprise attack or can be placed on the roof of the enemy to occupy the commanding heights to suppress firepower. And ground troops [can] conduct a three-dimensional pincer attack on the enemy in the building.”
With the added color offered by this description, it can at the very least be gathered that the drone-robodog pairing was conceptualized with the idea that it could be deployed during assault operations, especially in urban areas. Such environments are typically made up of tall buildings and complex structures that would otherwise be difficult to infiltrate, which is where it seems the company is saying this capability could be of most benefit. The Weibo account has even shared other videos of different robodogs in similar settings, suggesting that the company specializes in technologies designed with these environments in mind.
Technical specifications about both the robodog and the drone in the video, which the Kestrel Defense account has dubbed a ‘Red Wing Forward heavy-duty drone,’ do not seem to be publicly available. This makes it difficult to confirm how exactly these systems operate. It’s also unclear if that’s even the drone’s actual designation, but it does, however, possess many of the same visual characteristics that an average commercial off-the-shelf drone does, and China is a known manufacturer of a slew of these types.
While everything about the video is somehow both puzzling and unnerving, one aspect that is particularly hard to ignore is the drum-magazine machine gun that equips the robodog. Despite there being no mention of the specific type of weapon in the video’s description, its general appearance is largely reminiscent of the Chinese QBB-97 light machine gun.
The 5.8x42mm QBB-97 is a companion weapon for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army QBZ-95 assault rifle, from which the QBB-97 shares about 70% of the components according to Modernfirearms.net. What primarily separates it from the assault rifle is its longer and heavier barrel fitted with a folding bipod, as well as its ability to provide sustained bursts of automatic fire.
The drum magazine seen in the video can hold up to 80 rounds, but the standard 30-round box magazine used by its assault rifle counterpart is also compatible with the machine gun variant. With the ability to fire up to 650 rounds a minute, the QBB-97 makes for a respectable albeit limited armament, but how exactly firing it from the back of a robodog would work is an entirely different story.