China began to use drones in the 1980s, mainly as targets and jamming decoys for air defense systems. In the late 1980s, China purchased a batch of "Pioneer" UAVs from Israel for artillery positioning and shooting reconnaissance. The quantity is small and the experiment is strong. In addition, China also used the original high-altitude high-speed UAV to try to improve it into a reconnaissance UAV. In the late 1990s, a low-altitude tactical UAV system was successfully finalized, formally equipped with a large number of troops, and was well received in many synthetic military exercises. This type of low-altitude UAV has greatly expanded the flexible and efficient real-time reconnaissance capability that China's army has long lacked, especially the reconnaissance information with multi-band observation means and real-time feedback. However, this kind of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft has short activity time and low flight speed, and is only suitable for combat units below division level. It needs an independent control center and communication center to work normally. They often fight in the form of field troops, covering the field first division area of a typical aircraft with a combat width of 200 kilometers and a depth of 80 ~ 15, and the information needs to be uninterrupted for 24 hours. In addition, it is also necessary to consider that low-altitude activities will have greater wartime losses, and a limited number of UAV wild teams cannot meet such requirements.

At present, China lacks an effective rapid reconnaissance system used at the group army level. The air force's reconnaissance plane mainly takes photos and radar reconnaissance, so it is difficult to provide real-time video signals immediately. Information needs to be analyzed before it can be transmitted to the theater command post, and it takes more than 24 hours at the earliest, so that after the small UAV is equipped, the information update speed at the theater level is not as fast as that at the lower command post. In view of this situation, referring to the U.S. UAV development plan and its practical application and performance in the Second Gulf War, the Afghan War and the Bosnian War, China felt it necessary to develop a large-scale high-altitude long-endurance UAV system. The system has high flying speed and high clearance. As the saying goes, "stand tall and see far." Because of its high flying height, high-altitude UAV can monitor a vast battlefield by simply turning the lens or radar. Take "Pioneer" UAV as an example, its flying height is1000 ~ 2000m, the lateral observation distance is less than 6km, and the total width on both sides is only about10 ~12km. The flying height of Global Hawk is18000m, and the lateral distance can reach as far as 40-60km, and the width of 80km120km on both sides of the flight trajectory is within the visual field. In addition, the flying speed of low-altitude UAVs such as Pioneer is relatively slow, generally at 1.20km/h, while the flying speed of aircrafts such as Global Hawk is above 650km/h. Combined with the visual field difference between them, the difference in detectable area between them can reach more than 50 times in one hour, which means that the reconnaissance information and reconnaissance area of a Global Hawk need at least 40%. This shows how big the efficiency gap between high altitude system and low altitude system is.

In addition, the observation height of the high-altitude UAV is high, and the dynamic trends such as motorcades, a large number of moving people, open deserts, sporadic target activities on the sea surface can be monitored by using a large-field lens or a wide-beam scanning radar, which can provide statistics and discrimination of tactical information in a large range, which is difficult for a low-altitude reconnaissance plane to achieve. Compared with advanced reconnaissance satellites, the high-altitude UAV is only 18km from the ground, while the KH- 12 keyhole satellite with the best performance is more than 120km from the ground in the lowest orbit. Although satellites can provide a wider observation range, the resolution is far less than that of high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. If keyhole can see the model of the car on the ground, then Global Hawk can see who is driving the car. The biggest weakness of satellites is the discontinuity of observation information. Limited by the law of orbital operation, although the satellite can orbit the Earth 18 times a day, it will not pass the same place too many times a day, and each observation time is less than half an hour, so the continuous monitoring ability is very poor. Although American keyhole satellite can achieve high repetition rate and low orbit observation ability through orbit change, once such observation ability is used frequently, this satellite, which could have served in the sky for 5~ 12 years, will quickly shorten its in-orbit viability to 7 days. At present, only the space shuttle in the United States can launch such a large satellite as keyhole. After the Columbia accident, the space shuttle was almost deprived of its ability, and the restrictions on the use of satellites became quite high. The advantages of high-altitude drones can just make up for the shortcomings of satellites. Its trajectory is relatively free, it can hover in one place for a long time, and its detention time on the target can exceed 10 hour. It only needs to dispatch two planes alternately, which can ensure 24-hour uninterrupted real-time monitoring. At the same time, when the satellite is disturbed by clouds, fog and so on. Drones can observe below 6000 meters, which is very limited by climate. In view of the huge performance advantages of high-altitude UAV, China officially listed high-altitude long-endurance UAV as one of the key development plans in the "863 Plan", with China Aviation Research Institute as the center, and relevant research institutes and university research centers across the country undertake the development and research of each subsystem respectively.