China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics

The China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA) is the 11th Academy of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), headquartered in Beijing. Founded in 1956 as the Beijing Institute of Aerodynamics, it began as the wind-tunnel and aerodynamics house for China’s rocket and missile programmes and still does that work; what makes it relevant here is its second business, unmanned aircraft.

CAAA builds the CH (“Caihong”, Rainbow) family, China’s most widely exported line of military drones. The CH-3 fixed-wing attack drone first flew in 2007; the CH-4, a medium-altitude long-endurance type in the Predator bracket, has been reported in service with Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia and others; the larger CH-5 (21 m wingspan, 1,000 kg payload) flew in 2015, and the CH-7 is a stealth flying-wing combat drone. The academy has also shown smaller systems such as the CH-817 VTOL micro-attack drone, and Chinese reporting attributes hypersonic glide-vehicle testing to it.

Its newest line is unmanned transport. The CH YH-1000 cargo aircraft — 2,300 kg maximum take-off weight, 1,200 kg payload, 1,500 km range, more than ten hours’ endurance — first flew in May 2025 after a programme that began only in June 2024; a military variant with a weapons bay for precision-guided munitions has been reported. The YH-1000S, flown at Liangping in Chongqing on 1 February 2026, replaces the powertrain with a parallel hybrid co-developed with a Chinese new-energy-vehicle maker, shortening take-off and landing to the point that the aircraft can use secondary roads and grass strips. CAAA engineer Wang Chao described it to state television as the first time an automotive hybrid system had been applied to an aircraft, and said the aircraft was iterated for international customers.

The academy sits squarely inside China’s defence-industrial system rather than operating as a company in the Western sense: leadership, headcount and revenue are not published, and its products reach foreign operators through state export channels. Its significance for this site is twofold — the CH series is the drone family most often found in the hands of states that cannot buy Western or Turkish systems, and the YH-1000 line is the clearest public example of China building unmanned airlift at a scale, cost and runway footprint suited to resupplying forces where crewed transports cannot go.