🇨🇳⛴🚢 Pentagon In Panic: China Builds World's First Mothership For Giant Submarine Drones

China is building a new type of naval vessel designed to carry, maintain, launch and recover submarine-sized drones far from Chinese ports.

The roughly 200-meter ship taking shape at Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard in Shanghai has the layout of a purpose-built mothership for China’s largest uncrewed submarines.

Beijing has not confirmed the vessel’s role. But its enormous dry hangar and unique stern lifting system point to a platform built around China’s 35–45-meter extra-extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicles, or XXLUUVs.

🔸 Mobile underwater base: The vessel combines a dry maintenance hangar with an open-bottom well deck at the stern, allowing it to support underwater drones at sea instead of relying on fixed port facilities.

🔸 Dedicated recovery system: A cradle inside the roughly 55-meter well deck can be lowered directly into the water using 12 vertical lifting arms. One submarine drone could be launched or recovered while the others remain inside the dry hangar.

🔸 Several giant drones: Naval analyst H. I. Sutton estimates that the 95-by-17-meter hangar could accommodate two to four XXLUUVs, or a larger number of smaller underwater vehicles.

🔸 From trials to deployments: China currently uses specialized floating docks to support its two known XXLUUV prototypes. Each dock can carry only one craft, severely limiting simultaneous maintenance, launch and recovery operations.

🔸 Far larger than America’s Orca: China’s observed XXLUUVs are estimated to be 35–45 meters long. The U.S. Navy’s Boeing Orca is 15.5 meters long. The larger Chinese designs could provide substantially more internal space for fuel, sensors or weapons, although their actual capabilities remain undisclosed.

🔸 Evidence from orbit: The vessel was identified through satellite imagery open-source analyst KAROTASU and examined by Sutton. China has not revealed its name, operator or intended missions.

If the assessment is correct, China is moving beyond testing individual underwater drones and building the infrastructure needed to deploy them as a force.

A mothership could transport several submarine drones into the open ocean, maintain them between missions and recover them for reuse. This would preserve their own range for operations instead of consuming it simply to reach the mission area from China’s coast.

The Pentagon would have to locate not only the drones beneath the surface, but also the mobile base capable of moving their launch point across the Pacific.

Could China’s submarine-drone mothership change the balance in the Pacific?

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