Even when fully mobilised, China’s industrial system would only be able to meet 60 per cent of the country’s military demand for drones in a conflict, according to a rare study looking into the expected effects of a sudden war.

The estimates were produced by an artificial intelligence model that covered a multilevel supply chain linking drone assembly plants with subsystem and component suppliers. The study also accounted for inventories, production capacity, order backlogs, budgets and civilian factory conversion.

The paper was published online in the Journal of System Simulation on July 24. It was led by Professor Zhang Jihai, director of the National Defence Mobilisation Research Centre, and his team from the Beijing Institute of Technology.

The university has a strong military research background and is among the few Chinese universities subject to US sanctions.

The study found that capacity expansion could not quickly close the gap because new production lines took time to build.