China’s Luanniao space aircraft carrier will become a reality

Chinese military experts stated that the country’s new objective is to transform aerospace models worthy of science fiction into reality, in order to guarantee the country’s air supremacy. “It’s a matter of time.”

Initially created in 2017 as a purely academic research initiative by China’s armed forces, the ambitious Project Nantianmen includes a wide range of conceptual aircraft, of gigantic proportions with “exceptional qualities” and “technologies designed for the future of air and space warfare“.

These technologies include “hypersonic flight, air-to-space dual-mode propulsion, metamaterial stealth, adaptive airframe configurations, autonomous unmanned swarm coordination, AI-based decision-making, directed energy weapons, and space-atmosphere operations.”

Recent developments suggest, however, that China may now be proceed to construction of these aircraft — which would bring ideas into the real world that we are more used to seeing in science fiction or Marvel superhero films, such as the iconic “Helicarrier” from the Avengers.

As stated on Friday by the military analyst Wang Mingzhiin a program on the Chinese state television military channel CCTV, “the achievement of the objectives of the Nantianmen Project It’s just a matter of time“.

During the program, several animations with models of the aircraft conceptualized within the scope of the project.

“These cutting-edge technologies are not a question of whether they can be achieved,” said Wang, “but rather which ones will be implemented first and when they will ultimately all come to fruition.”

One of the conceptual aircraft that the project could make a reality is the huge space aircraft carrier Luanniaosays . With 100,000 tons, a length of 242 meters and a wingspan of 684 meters, the aircraft carrier is capable of carrying up to 88 autonomous aircraft.

In October, at the China International Helicopter Exhibition in Tianjin, the Nantianmen project presented a futuristic hunting concept designated vertical take-off and landing Purple Fire.

Nantianmen Project Purple Fire vertical take-off and landing fighter

According to , the concept could be reconfigured to carry out search and rescue missions, evacuation and other missions in addition to attack missions. Experts highlighted, however, at the time that the concept seemed more like a demonstration of technological capability than an idea that would ever come to fruition.

Another of the Nantianmen Project concepts that has recently caught attention is the Baidi, or White Emperorthe project’s main combat fighter. The aircraft, until then considered “a work of science fiction and imagination”, was presented at the Zhuhai air show in 2024.

As described at the time, the “White Emperor” was designed to fly at supersonic speeds and surpass the Earth’s atmosphere, having the capacity operate in space.

Like all the innovations and advances in defense that China has presented in recent years, the Chinese space aircraft carrier is for now just one concept with essentially propagandistic purposes — until the day it becomes reality, as happened with .