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[AI Library] Chapter 27. Swarming: Drone Tactics That Attack Like a Hive
Chapter 27. Swarming: Drone Tactics That Attack Like a Hive
Swarm: A drone tactic that attacks like a swarm of bees. In the wild, it is not the tiger that takes down the lion. A swarm of thousands of bees. Lions can be killed with guns. But what about a swarm of bees? A few bullets aren't enough. When we destroyed an SA-3 missile site over Iraq, I was alone with one wingman. We trusted each other and entered at a precisely calculated angle. It was a lonely and risky gamble. But the sky of the future is different. Hundreds and thousands of drones move like one giant intelligence, choking the enemy. This is the fear of swarms and drone swarms.
In June 2025, China test-flighted a high-altitude, long-endurance 'drone carrier' called 'Jiu Tian'. With a wingspan of 25 meters, this massive drone can release 100 to 150 small loitering munition drones from two internal hangars in its fuselage. This is a drone factory floating in the sky. As soon as they are released, these drones form swarms and rush towards enemy radar sites, air defense batteries, and communications hubs. It's a nightmare for defenders. The core philosophy of swarm tactics is simple.
“I’ll throw more targets at you than you have missiles.” Enemy air defense systems, such as the Russian S-400 or the Chinese HQ-9, are powerful. But the number of interceptor missiles they have is limited. Hitting a small drone worth only a few million won with an interceptor missile costing billions of won per shot is an act of economic and tactical suicide. A 2025 report from the U.S. Department of Defense's Center for a New American Security (CNAS) soberly points out this point.
“In a war with China, the People’s Liberation Army will likely launch large-scale heterogeneous salvos of missiles and drones, as well as swarms of autonomous drones, against U.S. forces. AI-based combat management and high-power microwave (HPM) weapons will be needed to counter this.” Take the US Department of Defense's 'Replicator' initiative. The plan is to deploy thousands of low-cost autonomous unmanned systems on the battlefield by August 2025. $500 million has been allocated for fiscal year 2024, and additional funding has been requested for fiscal year 2025.
We focus on Autonomous Collaborative Teaming (ACT) and Opportunistic Resilient Network Topology (ORIENT) techniques. This is a declaration of war that will cover the enemy's radar screen in white. In December 2025, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) officially established Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS), the Middle East's first dedicated kamikaze drone squadron. And the U.S. Navy successfully launched its Low Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS) from the flight deck of the USS Santa Barbara in the Arabian Gulf. LUCAS is a loitering ammunition reverse engineered from Iran's Shahed-136. Like the multi-million dollar MQ-9 Reaper.
Instead of expensive platforms, the strategy is to deploy large quantities of low-cost drones that can be justified in swarm-based combat where high attrition rates are expected. The US Department of Defense's 'Drone Dominance' program aims to secure 300,000 low-cost drones starting in early 2026. The goal is to reduce the cost per unit to $5,000. The roles of swarm drones are divided. Some become decoys. It sends radio signals disguised as fighter jets to fool enemy radars and waste expensive interceptor missiles. A representative example is the American ADM-160 MALD. Some conduct electronic warfare (Jammer).
It jams radio waves that render enemy communication networks and radars unusable. Some function as sensors. Scatter across the battlefield to collect data. Scattered drones become a huge distributed radar that can even detect hidden enemy stealth aircraft. And some are strikers. It is loaded with explosives and crashes directly into the target. In January 2025, the Swedish military unveiled a new drone swarm program developed by Saab. The software allows one soldier to control up to 100 unmanned aerial systems simultaneously. Tested during Arctic Strike exercise in March 2025.
It was planned to demonstrate its ability to adapt to complex environments in reconnaissance, defense and payload delivery missions. China's swarm tactics research is more systematic. The People's Liberation Army is developing three flock warfare approaches: 'Goose Flock Warfare', 'Bee Swarm Warfare', and 'Mothership Warfare'. The wild goose swarm concept involves a swarm of multi-functional drones sequentially performing reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and kinetic strike, with a cumulative effect on the enemy. The swarm concept is that small drones saturate air defense networks, paralyzing their ability to respond.
The mother ship concept is for a large unmanned aerial vehicle to transport multiple small drones to enemy territory and then release them. Jiuten is the embodiment of this concept. In August 2025, the People's Liberation Army tested 'drone swarms and robot wolves' as human-machine cooperative combat teams in an urban warfare confrontation training simulation. And on September 3rd, a number of new unmanned platforms were unveiled at a military parade commemorating the victory in World War II.
One of them is an unnamed fighter-sized drone that is believed to represent the latest development in China's Cooperative Combat Aircraft (CCA), or 'loyal wingman'. The technologies that enable swarming are not romantic. Distributed decision-making (distributed AI), formation geometry without collisions and interference (deconvolution), mission logic maintained even when communications are lost (offline autonomy), position and time synchronization under electronic warfare, sensor fusion that is not fooled by enemy deception.
If any one of these five things fails, the colony becomes a swarm of flies crashing into each other rather than a swarm of bees.
But there are also criticisms. An article published in War on the Rocks in August 2025 sharply points out: "True drone swarms do not exist yet. China's drone light show? Not a swarm. Leader-follower autonomous team? Not a swarm. One person controlling 100 drones? Not a swarm." The real cluster is singular, not plural. A distributed intelligence system that adapts to situations in real time without a central controller, designated leader drone, or even an internet connection. That's a true colony. The U.S. defense industry has yet to provide such a distributed system. Nonetheless, the strategic value of swarms is clear.
The enemy's air defense network has a bottleneck called 'target processing ability'. Radars are limited in the number of targets they can track simultaneously. The channels through which interceptor missiles can engage simultaneously are limited. The chain of command must set priorities, and the moment those decisions falter, the whole thing falters. The swarm rips that bottleneck. The combination of 6th generation fighters and swarms makes a real difference. An F-47 enters the battlefield accompanied by dozens of CCAs. Instead of shooting directly, pilots unleash swarms of these deadly mechanical bees upon the heads of their enemies.
When the drone breaks down the door, the human delivers the final blow from the safety of the back. The romance of war has disappeared. Instead, the efficiency of killing was maximized. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, mentioned the 'Hellscape' strategy in preparation for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The idea is to use thousands of aerial and underwater drones as an initial interdiction action, giving time for other warships and fighter jets to arrive in the area.
Kim Kyung-jin
Attorney · Former Member of the National Assembly · AI Policy Researcher
© 2026 Kim Kyung-jin. All rights reserved.