Shanghai Unveils 15th Five-Year Plan for Strategic Emerging Industries, Pushes Large Aircraft Scale-Up and

The General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government recently issued the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Strategic Emerging Industries in Shanghai." The plan proposes to orderly carry out demonstration scenario cultivation and promotion for low-altitude economy applications, expand low-altitude production operations and public governance applications, enrich consumer formats such as culture, tourism and sports, gradually unlock the potential of low-altitude logistics, and prudently develop low-altitude transportation.

In the low-altitude economy sector, the plan identifies three key development directions. First, advanced low-altitude aircraft: develop new vertical take-off and landing aircraft with large payload and long endurance, support new-configuration low-altitude aircraft such as compound-wing and tilt-rotor designs, overcome difficulties in overall design and aerodynamic layout of traditional general aviation aircraft, and innovatively develop large industrial-grade unmanned aerial vehicles. Second, key components for low-altitude equipment: conduct research in areas such as advanced energy and power systems, advanced flight control systems, and drone safety protection, and achieve breakthroughs in core technologies including high-energy-density aviation power batteries, high-power-density motors, and highly reliable flight control. Third, low-altitude infrastructure: plan and implement low-altitude infrastructure projects covering take-off and landing, flight support, and safety protection in an integrated manner, orderly advance the designation of low-altitude public air routes, accelerate the construction of low-altitude intelligent connected systems, and promote coordinated planning and organic integration of low-altitude infrastructure with energy, information, transportation, agriculture, water conservancy and other related infrastructure.

The plan also proposes to enhance large aircraft final assembly and supply chain capabilities, and strengthen technology sourcing and application verification. For large passenger aircraft, it aims to improve large-scale and serialized production capabilities, accelerate the development of wide-body passenger aircraft, and gradually achieve commercial deployment. For regional aircraft, it promotes the research and development of new energy regional aircraft and strengthens serialized development of business, medical, and cargo variants. For airborne systems, it promotes the research, development and integration of key airborne products and accelerates certification and installation. For final assembly, it promotes gradual improvement of the supply ratio of major structural sections and composite material structural parts, as well as the supporting capacity of final assembly manufacturing.