GJ-21 Drone Makes First Landing on China’s Type 076 Sichuan

China’s GJ-21 stealth reconnaissance and strike drone has completed its first takeoff and landing aboard the Sichuan, the lead ship of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s Type 076 class of amphibious assault ships and the first vessel of its kind built with an electromagnetic catapult and arresting gear. Chinese military sources announced the milestone on October 30, describing it as the navy’s first shipborne reconnaissance and strike stealth drone and confirming that the ship had carried out consecutive sea trials in late October. The date of the flight was not disclosed, and no figures on the drone’s range or payload accompanied the announcement. The test makes the Sichuan the first amphibious assault ship known to have launched and recovered a stealth combat drone, and highlights how quickly China has moved to put armed unmanned aircraft to sea.

The Sichuan was launched in Shanghai in December 2024 and began its first sea trials from the city in November 2025, displacing more than 40,000 tonnes at full load with a full-length flight deck and a twin island superstructure, and is designed to carry fixed-wing drones, helicopters and amphibious equipment. China’s navy stated in April that the ship had sailed to the South China Sea for scientific testing and training, describing the deployment as routine and not aimed at any target. The GJ-21 was first shown to the public at the military parade held in Beijing in September 2025 to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and is widely considered a naval derivative of the land-based GJ-11 flying wing, with images released since then showing a launch bar and an arrestor hook for catapult operations.

The test follows the commissioning of the carrier Fujian in November 2025, which also uses electromagnetic catapults and gives China three aircraft carriers in service alongside the ski-jump equipped Liaoning and Shandong, while the three earlier Type 075 class amphibious assault ships Hainan, Guangxi and Anhui have no catapults and operate helicopters only. The U.S. Navy demonstrated catapult launches and arrested landings with the Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator aboard the carrier USS George H.W. Bush in 2013, but terminated that program without fielding an armed successor, with its current carrier drone, the MQ-25 Stingray, an unarmed tanker still in testing. The Sichuan’s trials leave China considerably ahead in fielding a stealth combat drone from a ship, and on a class of vessel smaller than a supercarrier.

Chinese military commentator Zhang Xuefeng stated on October 30 that the GJ-21 has a substantial combat radius despite a smaller airframe than the Shenyang J-35 and the Chengdu J-20, China’s two stealth fighters, and that it can carry small, low-cost glide-guided bombs. He added that the drone is low cost and reusable and, unlike a hypersonic missile, can be recovered and redeployed multiple times. Turkey’s amphibious assault ship TCG Anadolu has flown the Baykar Bayraktar TB3 combat drone from its deck since November 2024, although that aircraft has no stealth shaping and launches from a ski-jump rather than a catapult.