How China became the world’s leading exporter of combat drones

The CH-6 drone on display at the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in 2021 in the southern city of Zhuhai, China [File: Ng Han Guan]

From Saudi Arabia to Myanmar and Iraq to Ethiopia, governments and militaries across the globe are stockpiling Chinese combat drones and deploying them on the battlefield.

In Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition has dispatched the Chinese aircraft, also known as uncrewed aerial vehicles or UAVs, as part of a devastating air campaign that has killed more than 8,000 Yemeni civilians in the past eight years. In Iraq, authorities say they used Chinese drones to carry out more than 260 air raids against ISIL (ISIS) targets as of mid-2018, with a success rate of nearly 100 percent.