The Shaanxi provincial government has agreed to let JD.com operate hundreds of low-altitude routes within a 300km radius, an area of more than 11,500 square miles. Currently, the intended customer target is Shaanxi farmers, who can use the drones to distribute their perishable fruits, vegetables, and meat without worrying about Shaanxi's rough, rural roads.

JD.com has made a major investment in this space beyond the work in Shaanxi. It is also building a 30-acre logistic and robotics research center in Xian, which will include HQ for JD Logistics, a cloud computing center, and a drone factory. After it establishes a working concept for large-scale drone delivery, JD.com wants to master inter-province drone aerial delivery, and then branch off to include global partnerships with international logistics providers.

The large payloads and AI enabled logistics network have applications beyond e-commerce. It can be a force multiplier for Chinese efforts abroad, like the One Belt One Road infrastructure initiative in Eurasia, or the PLA's dreams to augment and automate its peacekeeping and expeditionary logistics.