China’s drone carriers hide in plain sight among merchant ships

What if China’s next aircraft carrier doesn’t look like a warship at all – but like an ordinary cargo vessel quietly turning global trade routes into launchpads for drone warfare?

This month, multiple media outlets reported that China appears to be testing a new way to rapidly convert civilian cargo ships into drone-launch platforms, according to recent imagery and analysis.

Photos emerging since late December show a Chinese medium cargo vessel, Zhongda 79, reconfigured to carry a modular, truck-mounted electromagnetic catapult system capable of launching large fixed-wing combat drones, with the activity centered at Shanghai’s Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard. The system consists of multiple heavy trucks locked together to form a scalable launch track, potentially allowing drones weighing up to two tons to be launched without a traditional runway, either from land or from flat-decked merchant ships.

The concept, if operational, could enable the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to disperse airpower across China’s vast commercial fleet, complicating adversaries’ targeting and expanding drone reach in scenarios ranging from the Taiwan Strait to the Pacific island chains.

The same vessel had earlier been seen carrying containerized missile launchers, radars and close-in weapon systems (CIWS), suggesting a broader experiment with modular, container-based naval warfare.

However, key questions remain over the system’s maturity, including its stability at sea, power demands and the apparent lack of a recovery mechanism for launched drones, raising the possibility that the ship is intended for one-way strike missions or demonstrations rather than sustained carrier-style operations.

China’s large merchant fleet – at around 9,000 ships – provides it a functionally unlimited supply of potential ships for conversion into ad-hoc combatants. These ships could be indistinguishable from civilian ships plying critical sea lanes of communication from Kaohsiung in Taiwan to Long Beach in California, presenting a “Trojan horse” dilemma to adversaries. From a cost perspective, a containerized, modular weapons system could give a commercial ship worth US$80-120 million the firepower of a $2 billion destroyer, with more shooters possibly being more decisive than fewer fast shooters.

With its modular truck-mounted electromagnetic catapult, China may have turned the traditional aircraft carrier concept on its head. Instead of concentrating so much capability into a few expensive and potentially vulnerable warships, containerized drone launchers enable distributed drone-centric air operations that greatly enhance tactical reach and agility.

Hidden aboard civilian ships, hundreds of containerized missiles or drones could be used in a surprise initial attack to catch adversaries off guard and destroy key targets. In the case of Taiwan, China could covertly arm a significant number of its merchant vessels with containerized drones or missiles, reducing the tell-tale signs of a military buildup to take Taiwan.

In the event of an invasion, these ships could contribute to an initial decapitation strike against Taiwan’s political and military leadership and key energy infrastructure. China may employ cruise and ballistic missiles alongside drones to minimize losses, reserving manned aircraft for later use to secure control over Taiwanese airspace or to deter US and allied intervention.

Given China’s global merchant fleet, containerized missile and drone launchers could disperse lethality throughout the Indo-Pacific and complicate targeting. This approach would also reduce China’s need for overseas military bases, as it operates or is a stakeholder in multiple Pacific port projects that could accommodate merchant ships armed with containerized weapons and ease the burden on logistics by using ubiquitous civilian container handling equipment.

These locations may include Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and Vanuatu. Beyond the Pacific, China has similar infrastructure in South America, notably in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Panama and Mexico.

China also has port investments in the US – at Long Beach, California, and at Seattle Container Terminal. The prospect of such an attack from so close to the US – or from US territory itself – could force the US to implement a new screening process for Chinese merchant ships heading for US ports – a potentially escalatory move – or to accept more risk.

In the extreme, the mere possibility of containerized drone or missile launches from merchant shipping near US ports could force the US to assume worst-case scenarios, reshaping homeland defense planning even if such attacks never materialize.

But perhaps the most significant takeaway from China’s containerized missile launcher and modular electromagnetic catapult is the decoupling of combat capability from platforms – overturning a significant foundation of maritime law and the laws of armed conflict. The approach plays on the strengths of China’s grey zone warfare tactics that blur the distinction between trade and naval warfare. Instead of focusing on the purely destructive firepower of containerized missiles and drones, China’s weaponized merchant ships could aim to overstretch US and allied intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities while imposing stress on the latter’s decision-making, as any merchant ship could be a possible threat.

However, merchant ships have several limitations. For one, they are slow – cruising at around 25 to 29 kilometers per hour – making them unsuitable for fleet operations. They may also lack the deep survivability features of warships, such as structural strength, robust damage control and extensive internal compartmentalization.

Medium cargo vessels such as the Zhongda 79 may be limited to near-shore operations. However, containerized missiles or drones could be deployed on larger cargo ships with greater range and endurance. But each merchant vessel converted into a drone or missile carrier means one less ship for trade – possibly further weakening trade, which wartime disruptions may already weaken.

Building more capable drones could raise costs significantly, defeating the cost-effectiveness advantage that ad-hoc drone carriers offer. In addition to that, a successful attack on one of these ships could mean the loss of an entire drone swarm or its entire missile load – a significant capability loss.

It is also unclear whether the institutions supporting China’s merchant marine – its shipping companies and merchant marine academies, for instance – are ready for loss of revenue, the stresses of high-intensity naval combat operations, and are willing to sustain heavy casualties.

Taken together, China’s experiment with weaponized merchant ships signals a strategic shift toward mass, ambiguity and cost-imposition, where combat power is no longer tied to clearly identifiable platforms but embedded within the global fabric of trade itself.

Whether or not the concept proves viable at sea, it alone forces the US and its allies to confront a destabilizing future in which every cargo ship is a potential combatant, stretching deterrence, maritime law and crisis management to their limits.