this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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186
China’s ‘land aircraft carrier’ charges flying drone with microwave beam (www.scmp.com)
submitted 17 hours ago by FTonsilStones@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
36 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Scientists in China have demonstrated a wireless power transmission system that uses a ground-based microwave emitter to beam energy to an antenna array mounted on the aircraft’s underside. Importantly, they were able to do this while both the drone and charging system were in motion.

In tests, the car-mounted system kept fixed-wing drones in the air for up to 3.1 hours at an altitude of 15 metres (49 feet). The key challenge that the team overcame was maintaining alignment between the emitter and the drone during flight, wrote Song Liwei, the project’s leader.

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[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Swapping out batteries in flight would probably be more efficient.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

We don't even have automated battery replacement working on the ground, while stationary.

Building aircraft with a whole bunch of their body and mass that significantly changes, in flight, is extremely expensive and difficult.

Its why the V22 Osprey is widely regarded as a death trap, why we stopped building swing wing F-14s.

... Have you ever tried to uh, remove your car's rear seats, while on the highway, at 60 mph, and then also installed new seats, from a neaby car travelling alongside you?

Ok now do that with aircraft, at 15k feet, going 600 mph.

Yeah I'm sure that'll be about as efficient as Elon Musk's approach to designing the Starship+HeavyBooster.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I’m sure that’ll be about as efficient as Elon Musk’s approach to designing the Starship+HeavyBooster.

Compared to microwave energy transmission which has even worse efficiency.

Ok now do that with aircraft, at 15k feet, going 600 mph.

This is about drones. At 5 km distance and close to mach 1 you can absolutely forget any microwave based charging systems.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

You are aware that we've been shooting drones out the sky with lasers for about a decade now, right?

Not too long ago DHS/CBP freaked out over some balloons in Texas, thought they were cartel drones, shut down the airspace, burned them outta the sky with truck mounted lasers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/us-military-used-laser-take-border-protection-drone-lawmakers-say-rcna260887

JPL got 80% microwave power transmission efficiency at ~1.5 km, 8 years ago.

Granted, that was a fixed land point to fixed land point test, but also, it was 8 years ago.

I'll take 50% efficiency loss over 10% chance of 'everything explodes and crashes' any day.