Bullet Curtain: China's answer to US drone swarms in a Taiwan war

Asia Times

15-04-2025

China just pulled the trigger on the future of air defense with its new 'Bullet Curtain' system—a drone swarm killer that aims to clear the sky with a storm of bullets.
This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China recently unveiled its Bullet Curtain system, the world's first close-in anti-drone barrage weapon developed by state-owned Norinco, as revealed in the April 2025 edition of Modern Weaponry magazine.
Unlike traditional single-point interception systems, Bullet Curtain uses 35mm advanced hit efficiency and destruction (AHEAD) ammunition to unleash timed airbursts of sub-projectiles, forming a dense wall of shrapnel that can neutralize drone swarms, cruise missiles, mortar rounds and aircraft.
The system's 'plane-to-point' interception method allows for blanket saturation of attack zones—a capability Norinco chief designer Yun Bin has likened to a fly swatter regarding area coverage.
Bullet Curtain integrates radar, optical detection, fire control and management systems into a modular design, enabling compatibility with various platforms, including trucks, armored vehicles, naval ships and fixed installations.
Inspired by Metal Storm, a joint US-Australia concept from the 1990s, Norinco has advanced the prototype into a cost-effective operational system. Its modular adaptability ensures deployment flexibility across diverse combat scenarios.
Amid rising concerns over drone swarm tactics designed to overwhelm traditional defenses, live demonstrations of Bullet Curtain have reportedly proven effective.
Jake Rinaldi and Jake Vartanian highlight the weaknesses of traditional defenses against drone swarms in a January 2025 article for the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI).
The writers mention that China's conventional air defenses, such as the HQ-17 surface-to-air missile and PGZ-95 antiaircraft artillery, effectively target specific unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) types but struggle with small, slow, low-altitude drones, face high costs and rapid ammunition depletion.
Rinaldi and Vartanian mention that jamming technologies, such as those mounted on rifles and vehicles, are versatile but increasingly limited by autonomous UAVs' reduced signal dependence and susceptibility to swarms.
They add that while smoke screens are mobile and effective in obscuration, they are short-lived and impractical against large-scale attacks.
Furthermore, they state that counter-swarm UAVs, such as the CH-901 loitering munition, show promise in countering drones but remain a nascent tactic with limited munitions and evolving strategies.
They also note that aerial nets offer nondestructive capture for intelligence but are limited by performance against high-speed targets and dynamic scenarios.
Rinaldi and Vartanian say that advanced laser systems, like the LW-30, provide cost-efficient and rapid engagement of drone swarms but require clear lines of sight and significant power, posing logistical challenges.
They point out that China's counter-UAS capabilities exhibit critical vulnerabilities, such as insufficient scalability, limited endurance in saturation scenarios and reliance on traditional methods ill-suited for modern UAV swarm operations.
However, Bullet Curtain may have significant advantages over China's existing counter-UAS capabilities.
Ranjana Nallamalli and other writers, in a July 2023 article in the peer-reviewed Defense Science Journal, stress the effectiveness of systems like China's AHEAD, noting their ability to generate dense fragment fields that lower accuracy requirements and neutralize multiple small drones efficiently.
Such a system may be necessary for China considering the US's plans to use drone swarms in a possible Taiwan conflict.
In May 2022, The War Zone (TWZ) mentioned that US Air Force and RAND Corporation simulations highlight drone swarms as decisive in Taiwan defense scenarios.
According to the report, low-cost, autonomous UAVs linked by distributed mesh networks rapidly identify and strike Chinese targets like invasion fleets and transport aircraft, even without air superiority.
These UAVs, acting as sensors, jammers, and decoys, exhaust enemy air defenses while enabling stealth operations by manned aircraft such as F-35s.
In August 2023, the US Department of Defense (DOD) unveiled the Replicator initiative, which targets China's military buildup by leveraging thousands of attritable, autonomous systems across all domains within 18 to 24 months.
According to the DOD, these unmanned, cost-efficient systems are designed to offset China's strategic advantage on a military scale, comprised of its mass of ships, missiles, and personnel.
The DOD says that by relying on innovation and autonomy, the US aims to create a 'mass of our own' combining rapid production and deployment capabilities with reduced human risk.
In line with its Replicator initiative, in May 2024, the DOD chose to accelerate the fielding of the Switchblade-600 loitering munition, produced by AeroVironment Inc, as part of its first tranche of Replicator capabilities.
As for the second tranche of Replicator drones, the DOD announced in November 2024 that systems under consideration include Anduril Industries' Ghost-X and the Performance Drone Works C-100 systems.
As to how the US plans to use its Replicator drone swarms, the chief of US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), Admiral Samuel Paparo, mentions in a June 2024 Washington Post article that he intends to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned 'hellscape' to allow at least a month for US forces to get ready.
That timing may prove critical, as Timothy Heath and other writers mention in a June 2023 RAND report that Taiwan is vulnerable to defeat in the first 90 days of a Chinese invasion.
According to Heath and others, that timeframe is the minimum required for the US to marshal sufficient forces for a major combat intervention in East Asia.
Further, Bonny Lin and other writers predict in an August 2024 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that China could sustain major combat operations against Taiwan for six months.
But could the US actually pull off its 'hellscape' strategy in the Taiwan Strait? In a June 2024 report for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Stacie Pettyjohn and other writers mention that drone range and cost go hand in hand.
Pettyjohn and others say that while the US needs vast numbers of cheap, expendable units, they may not have the range to reach the Taiwan Strait launched from bases in Japan, Guam and the Philippines.
They also point out that this approach conflicts with the DOD's historical preference for fewer, more sophisticated systems. Moreover, Pettyjohn and others add that it is doubtful if the US defense industrial base, currently struggling to produce enough munitions, could produce enough drones for a long war with China.