China claims to fix fatal design flaw that killed US Navy’s stealth drone dreams

Interesting Engineering ^ | July 24, 2025 | Kaif Shaikh

[Red Badger]

Aviation Ping!....................

[Lazamataz]

UH oh

[madison10]

We are buying the drones from China? Why?! Isn’t that unwise?

[Red Badger]

[Jonty30]

Yes.
Don’t be surprised if they are just one button away from being remotely grounded.

[Retgearjammer]

I’m confused and puzzled. The US Navy is working with China on this? Seems against National security.

[13Sisters76]

I wonder how long we are going to have to depend on Chinese college grads since the democrats have ruined an entire generation of American children in the public school indoctrination centers?

[Williams]

I don’t think that’s what it says. The entire article is strangely written.
I think the Chinese used our drone as a test for the new software.
I don’t think we buy military drones from China.
Not really sure why China would publish news about this research.

[Frank Drebin]

Probably because it’s Chi-com propaganda written by Chi-Com “AI”.

[butlerweave]

China only copies not fixes just like AI

[Bob434]

Are we really accepting “free pagers” (not free in know, but for the sake of the analogy, just go with it) from a nation that hates us? Seriously?

[TheThirdRuffian]

Same. How the heck did this happen?

[TheThirdRuffian]

FWIW, grok says this article is fiction or vaporware, discussing a theoretical solution without hands on a X‑47B.

[Deaf Smith]

>>>US Navy is working with China on this?

Reads more like China has been following the development and testing of our stealth drone in real time, thanks to Microsoft’s back door feature to enter military systems.

[rdcbn1]

Thanks to the Obama Administration China stole a lot of the X-47B technical data package and design tools from Lockheed back around 2009.

This article would suggest they are bench marking their new AI design optimization systems against the legacy Lockheed systems. The Chinese are pretty good at this.

[allendale]

Tend to agree that this is AI generated propaganda . Why would a military publicize such capabilities? However if there is a modicum of truth in China’s development of advanced, stealthy although untested in actual combat drones and fighters, Xi may be increasingly tempted to make his mark in Chinese history. He would dearly like to successfully invade and take Taiwan. Yet the spectre of what happened to Putin in Ukraine restrains him. Launching an assault across 90 miles of open ocean with combat inexperienced one child soldiers and relying on untested combat systems could end in disaster against a determined opponent. Then Xi, his family and sycophants and possibly the Chinese communist party would lose everything.

[grey_whiskers]

Simulated evolutionary methods?

Wonder what the optimization function was.

[Frank Drebin]

They may want to take Taiwan, but reality will be much harsher. They'd be able to walk across the straits on the hulks of their sunken vessels, perhaps that is their plan. I'm not implying it would be a painless affair for the Allied forces, but it would not end well for China and they know it.

An actual shooting war with The United States is not something they want to begin. It ends the same way it ended for Japan in WW2.

[Antoninus]

Yes. Sounds like propaganda and reads like it was written by ESL AI. I’d be surprised if anything in it is true.