WZ9 "Divine Eagle"

Mysterious giant drone from China monitors Taiwan

This unusual silhouette has often been seen over mainland China, but the most recent sightings have been over the South China Sea.(Bild: x.com/East Pendulum)

What's doing its rounds over the South China Sea? For weeks, sightings of a surveillance drone have been reported, which is said to take off from a Chinese air base on the island of Hainan. The aircraft is strikingly large and offers an unusual sight - with two connected fuselages and wings at the very end with an estimated wingspan of 45 meters.

This would make the Chinese drone even larger than the largest US spy drone, the RQ-4 "Global Hawk" from the Northrop Grumman defense company, which was developed for monitoring distant targets. It has a range of more than 22,000 kilometers, the US drone can stay in the air for up to 40 hours and its primary purpose also gives some indication of the capabilities of its Chinese counterpart, which are likely to lie primarily in the area of radio and signal reconnaissance.