Fresh video aired this week on the PLA’s CCTV-7 channel showed the 72nd Group Army’s Huangcaoling Hero Company racing across a mock Taiwan Strait beachhead with a pack of four-legged wolf robots padding ahead of the marines. The clip marked the first time Beijing allowed cameras to film an assault unit replacing its point men with autonomous ground machines, signaling a new phase in amphibious doctrine.
“The robotic wolves absorb the first wave of enemy fire to open a safe corridor for infantry troops during beach landings,” said brigade commander Wang Rui, according to a report by the Independent. Each robot weighed about 70 kg, carried a 20 kg payload, and hit targets at ranges up to 100 m—enough capacity to haul rifles, breaching charges, or extra magazines while smashing barbed wire and dragon’s-teeth obstacles for the riflemen behind it.
The same exercise mobilized three categories of unmanned systems—ground robots, aerial drones, and surface craft—illustrating what Chinese doctrine writers called a swarm tactic in which machines and humans widen the maneuver space of a landing force. An earlier field test paired the quadrupeds with first-person-view kamikaze drones: helicopters and drones knocked out bunkers, then the dogs advanced to mop up.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.
Asia Economy noted that a large multi-rotor drone bombed the beach vertically before the robots breached surviving defenses, though engineers complained that exposed components left the machines vulnerable to light weapons. A firing-range trial documented by Newsbomb supported that view when small-arms fire disabled one robot, yet the mixed formation still quadrupled a squad’s combat radius and cut the detection-to-destruction cycle to under ten seconds.
Lt Col Jahara Franky Matisek of the U.S. Air War College cautioned that the dogs suited urban reconnaissance, breaching, or remote-weapon roles rather than open-field charges, the Independent reported. JoongAng Ilbo traced the platform to China South Industries Group Corporation and recalled a September parade in which the robots marched alongside drones and unmanned helicopters.
Taiwan’s defense ministry reacted by shopping for new anti-drone kits and training troops to shoot down unmanned intruders, Jornal de Notícias wrote, adding that amphibious landings have historically exposed troops to heavy losses during the first 200 m of sand. Enikos reminded readers that the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping views Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be reunified under Beijing’s control, even by force, a stance that keeps PLA interest in AI-enabled wolf packs—and Taipei’s countermeasures—on an upward trajectory.