YH-1000

The YH-1000 is a large unmanned cargo aircraft from the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, the CASC institute that builds the CH (“Rainbow”) family of export drones; the type is also written CH-YH-1000. The programme was started in June 2024, ground taxi tests followed in January 2025, and the aircraft made its first flight in May 2025 — eleven months from launch to flight, a pace the academy attributes to reusing flight-control and mission avionics already proven on the CH series.

The developer quotes a maximum take-off weight of 2,300 kg, a payload of 1,200 kg, a range of 1,500 km, endurance of more than ten hours and a service ceiling of 8,000 m. In July 2025 a test flight carried 400 kg of cargo over a 134 km route that crossed five peaks above 1,000 m, a demonstration aimed at the mountainous terrain of south-west China where the aircraft is based. Cargo is loaded through the nose; a belly drop allows delivery without landing. A military variant with an internal weapons bay for precision-guided munitions has been reported, though no service adoption has been announced.

The YH-1000 is the baseline of a line rather than a finished product. Its export-oriented successor, the hybrid-powered YH-1000S, flew in February 2026 with a fuel-electric powertrain borrowed from China’s car industry and a shorter take-off roll, and it is the S model that the academy is now presenting to foreign customers. The baseline matters because its figures — a 1.2-tonne lift over 1,500 km from an unmanned airframe the size of a light utility aircraft — are the reference the hybrid variant is measured against, and because the weapons-bay report shows the same airframe being considered for strike as well as supply.