China’s navy says a stealth combat drone has taken off from and landed back on an amphibious assault ship for the first time, and it published no picture of the event. The ship is Sichuan, hull number 51, the first Type 076, and the aircraft is the GJ-21, a tailless flying-wing built as a naval relative of the land-based GJ-11. The Aviationist quotes the military as calling it China’s first ship-borne stealth reconnaissance and attack drone.
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The claim surfaced on Oct. 30 through the China Military Bugle account on X, which the War Zone calls an official PLA mouthpiece. It came with no date, no location and no count of launches and recoveries, and neither the military nor state media has released official photographs or video of the flights.
The navy’s Oct. 30 wording and its gaps
The wording, as reported by the War Zone’s Joseph Trevithick, was that the GJ-21 “recently made its first successful take-off and landing” on Sichuan, a breakthrough that shows the navy can run fixed-wing stealth drones from large maritime platforms. Baird Maritime quotes the navy as saying it now has the capability to operate such aircraft from large combat platforms, and notes that capacity, maximum launch weight and sortie rate were not disclosed.
Chinese military commentator Song Zhongping told the Global Times that compatibility testing with several types of unmanned aircraft would follow, and said Sichuan “could serve as a testbed for cutting-edge technologies.” As reported by The Aviationist, he also called the flight a global first and compared the program to the American X-47B.
The ship’s launch and recovery hardware
Sichuan was launched on Dec. 27, 2024, at the Hudong-Zhonghua yard in Shanghai and began sea trials in November 2025, with commissioning tentatively expected by 2027. Baird Maritime lists one electromagnetic catapult, three arresting wires, two side aircraft elevators, and a stern well deck for two Type 726 air-cushioned landing craft, with room for more than 1,000 troops. Construction began in October 2023, and Army Recognition dates catapult tests using dead-load vehicles to August 2026, which would put the first aircraft launch within roughly two months of those catapult tests.
The outside evidence is circumstantial but consistent. Trevithick describes a satellite image from Oct. 30 showing fittings for three arresting cables, and imagery that places the ship at the shipyard on Oct. 13, gone four days later and back by Oct. 26. Earlier, by late 2025, several GJ-21s were reportedly doing simulated catapult launches and arrested landings at a land-based navy facility at Huangdicun, according to Rupprecht, and early 2026 deck handling used a mockup aboard the ship.
Size figures for the ship are mostly estimates. Army Recognition gives a hull length of 252.3 meters and a displacement of about 50,000 tons, roughly 39 to 43 percent above the Type 075, and warns that installed generating capacity does not mean power is continuously available for catapult launches. Cost estimates it cites run from $1.4 billion to $2.8 billion.
On the aircraft itself, Army Recognition notes a reinforced nose gear with a launch bar and an arresting hook, and says the combat radius, weight and payload remain undisclosed. The GJ-21 first appeared at the Sept. 3, 2025, Beijing military parade. The Aviationist also cites a social media post that claims roughly 30 drones per ship, more than two tons of internal payload and a combat radius near 2,000 kilometers, figures that the outlet does not verify and that this article treats as rumor.
How far the claim reaches
The War Zone’s wider look at China’s drone programs, published on Nov. 10 after the GJ-11 footage appeared, still describes the Sichuan flights as unverified, with no footage released. That leaves the Oct. 30 statement as the sole public record. Speculation has also reached the carrier Fujian, which Song suggested the drone might eventually operate from, though that remains conjecture without a published trial.
Even taken at face value, the flights show the GJ-21 can use the ship’s launch and recovery gear under the conditions tested. They do not reveal sortie rates, fleet size or whether the drone can fight from a deck. Chinese commentary has also pointed to a first-of-its-kind label, which needs a caveat: the American X-47B made autonomous carrier landings in 2013, and the Aviationist notes it was an experimental demonstrator whose program ended in 2015, with the Navy’s follow-on becoming the MQ-25 Stingray refueling drone.
So the first-of-its-kind claim is narrower than it sounds: a combat-oriented stealth drone from an amphibious ship, as reported by the navy itself. The Aviationist says the flight would be the first of its kind only if official visual confirmation eventually backs it up, and its coverage describes the GJ-21 as a naval, stealth, carrier-based combat drone built on the GJ-11 airframe. Commissioning of Sichuan is tentatively scheduled by 2027, according to Baird Maritime, which leaves time for the images, dates and flight counts Beijing has not yet shown.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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