Wing Loong-3

China's largest and most capable hunter-killer drone — a long-range medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV with a claimed 10,000 km reach, 40-plus-hour endurance and up to 16 weapons a sortie, and the first of its family able to shoot back at other aircraft. It is the spearhead of China's cut-price, no-political-strings drone exports — the platform narrowing the gap to America's Reaper for buyers Washington won't sell to.

Overview

The Wing Loong-3 (Yilong-3, "Pterodactyl III", WL-3) is the largest, most capable member of AVIC/Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group's Wing Loong MALE family — a turboprop-pusher built for fused intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance and strike, able to swing between anti-submarine, maritime-strike, ground-strike, search-and-rescue and reconnaissance roles in a single sortie. Publicly unveiled at Airshow China (Zhuhai) in November 2022, it is essentially a scaled-up Wing Loong II with a V-tail and ventral fin. Its strategic significance is commercial as much as military: it is the cutting edge of China's drive to sell capable armed drones, cheaply and without the end-use conditions that come with American systems, into a market the US has long restricted. (One honest caveat throughout: essentially all performance figures trace to AVIC marketing and Chinese state media, and several conflict.)

🔒 The full Wing Loong-3 file is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Below the line: development history, design and capabilities, variants, the combat record, advantages and limitations, comparable systems, outlook, the full specifications table, our sourcing, and the analyst assessment — procurement, suppliers and the BattlePolicy verdict. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →