无人船队——中国掌控南海的利器 [美国媒体]

A video from late May 2018 shows a swarm of56 small, unmanned boats operating in the South China Sea. While a rudimentarydemonstration, it mirrors similar exercises performed by U.S. Navy boatspracticing — semi-autonomously — to defend harbors and intercept incomingvessels. The Chinese robo-boats do not appear to be armed, but the companybehind it — Yunzhou Tech Corporation — revealed an armed unmanned boat at aBeijing “Civil-Military Integration Expo” in July 2017. The show focused oncutting-edge technologies that China believes could provide an “asymmetric”advantage in a conflict with the United States. Meaning, cheaper technologiesand tactics that allow a weaker adversary to exploit unanticipated weaknessesin a more powerful opponent. If the at-sea demonstration is any sign, thosecapabilities are developing.

2018年5月下旬，网上出现了一段视频。一群56艘小型无人驾驶船只在南中国海作业。虽然这只是一个初步的演示。但是它却透露出了很重要的信息，之前美国海军也曾经组织过类似的演习。这种无人船只是半自动的操作模式，主要用来保卫港口，拦截进入港口的船只。中国的“机器自动船”似乎并没有配备武器。这些无人船是由云洲科技公司开发的。在2017年的七月，北京曾经举办过“军民融合博览会”，展会上曾经展示了一艘武装无人驾驶船。该展会聚焦于中国的尖端技术，中国认为这些技术可以让中国在与美国的冲突当中提供不对称的优势。也就是说，廉价的技术和恰当的战术可以让一个相对较弱的对手去攻击强大对手的和弱环节。那么这一举动究竟有什么含义呢？这些武器的性能都正在发展之中。

The expensive and difficult portion of arobotic swarm is the technology you can’t see — the networks and algorithmsthat allow machines to work together and avoid obstacles. The boats themselvesare cheap. Once you figure out the mathematical problems, then it’s a simplematter of arming each of those small boats with rockets and missiles andsending them after a $1 billion cruiser. Like a swarm of mosquitoes, thecruiser can’t swat them all away before one draws blood. However, the Chinesemilitary is not entirely sold on the concept, as there are moreconservative-minded generals who prefer the People’s Liberation Army focuson  improving and expanding itsconventional, and established, military forces — warships, fighter jets andmissiles — as opposed to taking risks on largely untried technology.

用机器人绝非是一件简单的事情，其核心部分是你看不到的。无人机器的核心部分是通信网络及算法部分。这两者可以让机器进行协同的工作，同时避免他们彼此之间发生碰撞。当然，这些船本身都是很便宜的。一旦你解决了那些数学问题，剩下的事情将会变得非常简单，只需要要用火箭和导弹去武装每一艘船只就可以了。然后，在一艘价值10亿美元的巡洋舰后面，这些无人船只就可以对他们发动攻击。这些小船就像一群蚊子一样，虽然很讨厌，但是巡洋舰很难将他们全部驱离。然而，军方并没有完全接受这一个概念，因为军方有很多人的思想依然比较保守，他们更喜欢中国不断改善和扩大其传统的军事力量。比如军舰，战斗机和导弹。无人舰船技术并没有经过仔细的检验，贸然上马可能会有很大的风险。

But Chinese companies are still developingdrones, and the armed Wing Loong — similar to the U.S. Predator — hasproliferated to Africa where it has seen combat. A more anodyne set of examplesof developing Chinese drone tech are the dancing displays of networked machinestaking to the skies during public events. “Clearly theU.S. and China are in some sort of weird swarm race,” Paul Scharre of theCenter for New American Security told the Financial Timeslast year in a broadoverview of the trend. That same article discussed the divide within the PLAover whether this tech — not as far-flung as it used to be — is worth theinvestment. “China, which is at the center of the commercial drone industry,has some advantages as the era of unmanned systems dawns,” the article’sauthors Emily Feng and Charles Clover wrote. That would be China’s largedomestic consumer demand for drones, and the country’s large manufacturing baseworking together to spur development. Naturally, the Chinese government andmilitary are tapping into it.

但是中国依然在开发无人机。中国开发出与美国军方“捕食者”类似的“翼龙”战机。这款无人机已经在非洲大陆上开花结果，已经开始在非洲参与到战斗当中去。有很多例子可以看出中国无人机的发展。在中国的很多大型活动场合，都有大批的无人机在网络的控制下进行表演。很显然，美国和中国正处在某种竞争当中。“新美国安全中心“的保罗.沙勒去年在接受英国《金融时报》采访的时候，曾对这一发展趋势进行了广泛的描述。这篇文章讨论了PLA内部对于这项新技术的一些看法，他们讨论这项新技术是否值得进行投资。文章的作者艾米丽.冯和查尔斯. 克劳尔写到：“中国已经成为了全球商业无人机产业的中心，随着无人系统在世界开始逐步流行开来，中国所拥有的优势越来越明显。”中国国内对无人机有着巨大的需求，中国本身拥有着庞大的制造业的基础。两者互相促进，不断发展。很自然的，中国的ZF和中国的军方也对此投入了越来越大的心力