Overview
- A paper by Wang Lei and colleagues at the PLA Dalian Naval Academy, published in a peer-reviewed Chinese journal, proposes using large-calibre guns to fire prefabricated-fragmentation shells that burst near drone swarms and produce a cloud of high-speed fragments to damage multiple unmanned aircraft.
- The idea has been linked to President Trump’s proposed Trump-class or Golden Fleet, a 30,000–40,000-tonne surface combatant that the CBO estimated at about 35,000 tonnes and that is planned to carry large naval guns alongside missiles, railguns and lasers.
- Researchers argue gun-fired fragmentation could lower the cost of defending against massed cheap drones by avoiding the rapid depletion of expensive missile interceptors and by providing an area-effect layer that complements, not replaces, missile-based air defenses.
- Technical modeling in coverage showed one modeled shell producing about 2,000 fragments with a per-drone hit probability of roughly 3.95 percent in a 30-drone scenario, but the results rely on assumptions about fragment spread, burst range, fire-control accuracy and programmable fuses.
- The proposal remains at the research and debate stage and has prompted mixed reactions from experts and the public who question survivability, practicality, costs and shipbuilding constraints while some analysts say it could force navies to rethink layered, cost-conscious air defense.