Overview
- State media and the CH-7’s developer reported the first flight occurred recently at an airfield in northwest China, marking the official start of flight testing.
- Engineers said the sortie verified autonomous taxi, takeoff and landing, attitude control, and trajectory tracking in line with design and simulation results.
- CASC and CCTV say upcoming phases will expand the flight envelope and verify mission payloads, with a designer previously describing the current version as a reconnaissance platform.
- Official descriptions place the CH-7 in a HALE/ISTAR role for long-endurance maritime surveillance and theater-level targeting, with some reports suggesting it could provide guidance for long-range strike weapons.
- Imagery highlights a stealthy flying-wing design that poses control-stability challenges, and analysts note unresolved questions after an earlier video showed a variant with canted vertical tails.