China’s ‘Mysterious Dragon’ stealth drone showed off internal bomb bays and a claimed hit

A pilotless flying wing rolls out of a hangar, lifts off with its wheels folding away, and later, according to Chinese state television, drops its first live weapon and scores a hit. That is the story China’s military wants told about the GJ-11, a stealth combat drone also called Xuanlong, or Mysterious Dragon, after new footage aired on Nov. 9.

Read next on Morning Overview: The Justice Department asked courts to undo approvals for three offshore wind farms, one already making power

The clip showed the aircraft’s belly weapons bays, retracting landing gear and chin sensor in more detail than Beijing has allowed before. Almost everything about the strike itself, including date, location, target and weapon, was left out. The air force’s own copy of the clip, as carried by CGTN, runs only 20 seconds and is stamped 18:46 on Nov. 9, two days before the service’s 77th anniversary on Nov. 11.

Two internal bays under a blended wing

The War Zone’s Thomas Newdick wrote on Nov. 10 that the footage shows two internal ventral bays, each with its own set of serrated-edge doors, set into the blended wing-body. He estimated each could take at least a 1,000-pound-class weapon and probably a 2,000-pound-class one, while stressing that the real dimensions and loadout are unconfirmed.

The bay layout is not new. An industry model at Airshow China 2021 had already shown it, and the Global Times recalled that the 2021 display opened two belly bays, each holding several precision-guided bombs. The fresh material adds what a model could not: a full-size airframe inside a hangar, with a bay door shown partly open. Andreas Rupprecht, a Chinese aviation specialist who contributes to the War Zone, reads the serial numbers on the aircraft as a sign of low-rate initial production.

The footage also gives a better look at the nose. A trapezoidal glazed fairing under the chin probably houses an electro-optical and infrared sensor of the kind used on the J-20 and J-35 fighters, and the heavy twin-wheel nose gear may be shared with the naval GJ-21, Newdick wrote. The new takeoff sequence shows the gear retracting after liftoff; the November 2025 video had it still extended. Other signature-control touches are visible. A dorsal intake and a flattened, shielded exhaust on the upper rear keep the engine out of sight from below. Chinese military commentator Song Zhongping told the Global Times that the aircraft carries radar-absorbing coatings and that its nozzle received special stealth treatment, though he gave no details.

The claimed first hit and the operators behind it

China Central Television’s military channel said the GJ-11 completed its first live-fire strike mission and hit its target with the first weapon released. It named two operators, Shi Xiaoran and Fu Ting, as part of the first batch of female drone operators trained independently by the PLA Air Force.

Newdick called the framing odd for an aircraft that has flown test sorties for years, and suggested it might reflect a new sensor, a new delivery method or a translation quirk. In his telling, Shi Xiaoran said cloud first hid the target, so she circled again, found it, released the weapon and scored a hit. She also played down gender, in a statement CCTV carried: “None of this has anything to do with gender, only with proficiency and hours of operation.” If the claim is read at face value, it fits the mission set CCTV described: airstrikes and suppression of enemy air defenses. Newdick said possible loads for the latter include anti-radiation missiles or networked small-diameter-bomb equivalents, but the actual weapons, quantities and anti-radiation capability are unknown.

What is still missing from the official picture

None of the outlets that reported on the footage could verify the live-fire result independently. The Aviationist’s Parth Satam read the report as the clearest sign yet of strike capability and thought the aircraft had moved beyond prototype status, while noting that deployment details, weapons and manned-unmanned teaming capabilities remain undisclosed.

The air force’s own short release on CGTN was sparser than the CCTV segment. It gave the codename Xuanlong, listed airstrikes and suppression of enemy air defenses among the missions, and repeated that the PLA Air Force said in November 2025 that the GJ-11 had officially entered service. It credited the aircraft with stealth performance, long endurance and high strike accuracy, and it quoted no official and named no operator.

Program history gives some sense of scale. The GJ-11 descends from the Sharp Sword demonstrator and was first shown publicly at the October 2019 National Day parade in Beijing. Satellite imagery shows frequent activity at the Malan test facility in Xinjiang, and three GJ-11s deployed to Shigatse in Tibet between August and September 2025, with hangar images showing three airframes and a possible fourth.

The teaming story has a visual record too. The air force’s November 2025 anniversary film showed the drone flying in a formation with a J-20 stealth fighter and a J-16D electronic-warfare jet, a combination Song called ideal for breaking through enemy defenses. The War Zone reads the new sequences, which pair the drone with J-16 and J-20 fighters, as showing a human in the loop, though communications, data sharing and autonomy levels are unconfirmed.

The open question is who found the target. Whether the GJ-11 can identify and engage targets autonomously is unclear, and Shi’s account has the operator circling for a second look. China separately claimed on Oct. 30 that a naval relative flew from an amphibious ship, again without footage. Until Beijing releases mission video, both claims rest on its word.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.