Offering a comprehensive description model and proper qualitative evaluation scheme of the intelligence characteristic of unmanned swarms poses a challenging basic theory and key technology problem. Firstly, this paper analyses and clarifies the concept of the intelligence characteristics of unmanned swarms. Subsequently, based on the existing description model of human intelligence and cooperative scheme based self-organization, it constructs a comprehensive model for describing the intelligence characteristic of unmanned swarms. Some anticipated intelligence characteristics for unmanned swarms are introduced and summarized. Following this, the qualitative evaluation process of the intelligence characteristics is abstracted as a hierarchical evaluation system, and the evaluation model based on multi-layer generalized operators is introduced for the sake of practical inference. Finally, taking the self-learning characteristic as a case, the qualitative evaluation process of intelligence characteristics and some key problems in testing are described and explicated. The result suggests that the intelligence characteristics of unmanned swarms can be evaluated qualitatively. The qualitative conclusions that are drawn from the description, test and evaluation can be considered to determine the presence of the intelligence characteristics in unmanned swarms, which also is the basic premise of the quantitative evaluation of the intelligence of unmanned swarms