Homo Sapiens

There was good news for Gafei and the others.

Three pieces, in fact.

The first was that after a period of intense research and development under the technical guidance of Li Qingye, the recently consolidated military-industrial department had begun to yield its first products.

By leveraging the existing civilian industrial supply chains in East Asia and Southeast Asia—such as commercial drone manufacturers, civilian piston engine companies, and consumer electronics suppliers—

they had rapidly cobbled together their first cruise missile: the Typhoon-1 Cruise Missile.

Luzon, the Mishan Islands.

Near the Nantu Mountain Range on the West Coast of Panay Island lay an obscure little town called Kulas Town. The town was nestled against the mountains, facing the Sulu Sea.

「Just over half a month ago.」

The military-industrial department of the Homo Sapiens Company, operating under the Internal Affairs Department, established Project 101 here. Publicly, it was presented as a company-funded agricultural aircraft manufacturer named the Flying Fish Company.

In reality, the company did indeed plan to import three drone production lines and two piston-engine agricultural aircraft production lines from Huaguo.

A small airfield, a test site, and an assembly plant had already been established here.

Inside the Flying Fish Company’s assembly plant.

Chief Engineer Fang Bai had been headhunted from Huaguo by the Homo Sapiens Company’s HR department. He was originally a full-system integration engineer at DJI Company.

If the Homo Sapiens Company hadn’t offered a $500,000 relocation package, all-inclusive immigration services for his entire family, and a base annual salary of $120,000, he never would have moved to Luzon to build planes on some desolate island.

After arriving, however, he adapted surprisingly quickly. This was mainly because many of his colleagues were also Chinese, including five recent graduates who had come from Huaguo as skilled migrants.

It had been made clear during the recruitment process that due to the confidential technology involved, the Flying Fish Company only accepted employees with Luzon citizenship.

Luzon may be underdeveloped, but the job market for university graduates in Huaguo is incredibly competitive.

It’s easy to find a job, of course. You could haul bricks at a construction site and, with some effort, make over ten thousand yuan a month.

But for a graduate from a top-tier "Project 211" university to end up hauling bricks? Even if the graduate themselves were willing, their parents and everyone around them would surely gossip behind their back.

That’s why the Homo Sapiens Company’s HR department specifically targeted Huaguo for recruitment. After all, with millions of new graduates every year, there were always some willing to come to Luzon for the right price.

Many of the people working under Fang Bai had been recruited this way.

Of course, since the Flying Fish Company was involved in highly classified work, employees underwent further screening. Those assigned to the company typically had their entire families, from the elderly to the young, living within areas controlled by the Homo Sapiens Company.

Fang Bai looked at the drone on the assembly line, which used a motorcycle piston engine as its core, a strange expression on his face.

A dozen or so technicians were bustling around the aircraft.

He turned and whispered, "Paul, haven’t we stripped this down a bit too much? I reckon it’ll fail after just two or three uses."

But Paul was completely unconcerned. "It doesn’t matter. Two or three flights is all we need."

’Two or three times?’ Fang Bai wasn’t an idiot. The moment he heard that specification, he knew the drone was positioned as a disposable product.

’The question was, what kind of company or organization would procure such a disposable drone?’

’The answer was obvious.’

The Typhoon-1 Cruise Missile was 4.6 meters long with a 3-meter wingspan. Equipped with a turbocharged gasoline piston engine, its top speed could reach 531 kilometers per hour, with a cruising speed of 360 kilometers per hour.

Its maximum operational radius was 1,200 kilometers (one-way). While carrying a 100-kilogram payload, this dropped to around 300 kilometers.

Fang Bai had designed it exactly to the company’s specifications: make it as cheap as possible. Wherever civilian parts could be used, they were to be used, and the cheaper, the better.

Based on his experience, if this Typhoon-1 Cruise Missile were to be mass-produced, the manufacturing cost per unit likely wouldn’t exceed $3,000.

Of course, he didn’t know the cost of the drone’s intelligent control system, so that part of the cost was difficult to estimate. He also hadn’t factored in the cost of the payload itself.

Even so, at $3,000 a unit, it was astonishingly cheap—about the price of a dozen motorcycles.

Paul inquired, "When do the low-altitude flight tests begin?"

"In a week," Fang Bai replied. "We’ve prepared ten prototypes for extensive testing. But what about the programmers?" he added, reminding him.

Paul replied confidently, "Don’t worry. We plan to subcontract that work to the Spiral Body Company."

"Won’t that risk a leak?" Fang Bai knew how serious the company was about confidentiality. If a leak occurred, they would all be in deep trouble.

Paul replied calmly, "The Spiral Body Company is also a Homo Sapiens subsidiary, and their security clearance is even higher than ours."

"I see." Fang Bai understood immediately.

Having previously worked at DJI Company, Fang Bai knew very well that the core of drone technology lay in its sensors, chips, and control software.

As far as he could tell, the Flying Fish Company outsourced all of its other components; only the sensors, chips, and control software were developed in-house.

The first time he’d handled their proprietary chips and sensors, his jaw had nearly hit the floor.

Because the chip’s performance was astounding: a floating-point computational speed of 3 TFLOPS and 500 terabytes of built-in storage. It was practically a miniature supercomputer.

The benefit of such monstrous computing power was that the drone’s control precision and reaction speed were incredibly high. As long as it was equipped with suitable control software, it could easily perform many highly difficult control tasks.

It was similar to Musk’s Falcon rockets. Their engine technology wasn’t particularly advanced, but they accomplished parallel control of a whole bank of engines by relying on superior chip technology.

And the Homo Sapiens Company’s chip technology was an order of magnitude more powerful than any electronic chip currently on the market.

A single bio-chip, the size of a fingernail, could achieve 3 TFLOPS of floating-point computational power, came with 500 terabytes of storage, and had ultra-low power consumption.

Fang Bai knew that with this level of computational power, the Typhoon Drone’s potential was absolutely immense.

Things he had previously considered impossible, like ultra-low-altitude cruising and low-power flight, could now be achieved through the brute-force application of computing power, squeezing every last drop of potential out of the drone.

The Typhoon-1 Cruise Missile’s maximum operational radius was listed as only 1,200 kilometers.

In reality, that figure accounted for a massive waste of power. By constantly adjusting its flight attitude and monitoring the airflow, temperature, and wind speed of the surrounding airspace, the drone could achieve flight characteristics similar to a powerless glider.

The current flight distance record for a human-piloted glider is over two thousand kilometers.

’Could a Typhoon Drone, carrying a miniature supercomputer on board, possibly perform worse than a human?’

With enough flight tests, combined with data from wind tunnels and computer simulations, the Typhoon Drone could absolutely fly farther than any human-piloted glider.

As for its relatively slow flight speed, that could be mitigated by flying at extremely low altitudes and applying a stealth coating. As long as it remained undetected, speed was irrelevant.

Besides, Fang Bai had already devised a solution for the speed issue. The Typhoon Drone would use a low-speed glide mode during its approach. Once it neared the target’s designated perimeter, it would rapidly switch to a high-speed sprint, pushing the engine to its absolute limit, regardless of the consequences.

After all, he already knew the company’s philosophy: the Typhoon Drone was a one-time-use product. If they didn’t wring every last bit of power out of the engine, what were they saving it for? Christmas?

’Still, a part of him was worried. He didn’t know why the Homo Sapiens Company was developing such a weapon. After all, the relationship between Luzon and America was... complicated.’