The surprise isn't the development of hypersonic tech, it's how this was done and the capabilities. The DF-17 mentioned in comments is a relatively well-known missile, with about 2,000 km of range, and delivers a hypersonic glide vehicle called DF-ZF. What happened here is a Long March orbital rocket put a DF-ZF or secret version into space, it orbited the globe, then essentially launched from space at a ground target.
> What happened here is a Long March orbital rocket put a DF-ZF or secret version into space, it orbited the globe, then essentially launched from space at a ground target.
That sounds like a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System:
I’ve seen the content reported here in two other places, both which emphasize a “surprised” aspect.
However, the link article includes this statement which (to me) indicates that the surprise, if one truly existed, was the test, not the existence of the missile platform:
“At a 2019 parade, China showcased advancing weaponry including its hypersonic missile, known as the DF-17.”
The surprise was the delivery vehicle/method it was launched into orbit and then deorbited to hit a target.
Basically what China just showed is that they are capable of parking these in orbit which would both greatly increase their effective range as well as reduce the signature making them far harder to detect and intercept.
It’s basically another Sputnik moment for the US. When the USSR launched Sputnik the US was scared that they’ll launch a bunch of nukes that they would be able to bring down on the US at a moments notice.
Keep in mind that back then ICBMs weren’t really a thing yet not to mention a full nuclear triad and that the US had to mainly rely on its bombers to deliver nuclear weapons and its defense primarily focused on shooting incoming soviet bombers.
If China parks a bunch of these in space it would mean that any US naval task force or ground force anywhere in the world is now at risk.
That’s quite a tectonic shift in the balance of power, and if anything these articles probably downplaying the actual impact something like this can have.
Wouldn't the Space Weapons Ban treaty theoretically cover the launching and parking of a bunch of these in space/Low Earth Orbit? Ignoring the toothless nature of most treaties in general.
So, time for the US to kick in a few bucks to accelerate the development of Starship/Super Heavy?
Having large numbers of "satellite disabling" satellites is feasible with SH/SS. Melting the electronics with a high powered maser pulse, matching orbit and snipping the red wire...probably lots of ways to disable a satellite that don't start Kessler Syndrome, once getting a satellite into orbit is cheap.
More SSBNs won’t help in this case. The intent isn’t to counter the US nuclear capability but to greatly restrict their conventional power projection.
The US heavily relies on its naval assets especially its aircraft carriers to project power across the globe.
I suspect the American answer would be two fold both increase detection and interception capabilities and attempt to gain further foothold in the region by establishing more bases in places like the Philippines and even potentially Vietnam (the irony would be quite thick on this one).
China is probably betting that the US would have hard time expanding its presence on the ground even in places like South Korea where it already has large presence due to the fears of escalating regional tensions further. It would also allow China to push the narrative of the US being the aggressor.
And pretty much the place that the US would like to protect the most is going to be off limits to their expansion as the US establishing a Guam or Okinawa size presence in Taiwan would very likely lead to the invasion they would want to prevent.
> The US heavily relies on its naval assets especially its aircraft carriers to project power across the globe.
Maybe that should change. Carriers were king in the era before missiles. In this day and age I wonder how effective carriers really are against adversaries with high tech missiles.
I also wonder if the US will come up with their own version and test it by hitting a dummy target in the SCS - signalling it’s meant for the Chinese Navy; it would be funny if everything China comes up to weaken the power of the US Navy was in turn used to weaken their Navy should they try to invade Taiwan.
Taiwan is 100 miles of the coast of mainland China. China doesn’t need massive ships to invade Taiwan.
It can invade it with inflatable rafts if push comes to shove and since the mainland is 100 miles away it’s well within the range of rocket artillery and air assets.
So they are going to invade with just unprotected troops and no other hardware? No armour. No artillery strikes on Taiwan - the farthest hitting artillery is only 43.5 miles; according to Google, by the US Army ironically. Are they going to re-supply the invasion force via inflatable rafts too?
In the worst case, the missiles can be adapted for anti-personnel use with cluster munition warheads to shower the battlefield with shrapnel - which should be pretty effective against troops not protect by armour.
I was thinking, nuclear-powered drone submarines armed with conventional torpedos and possibly SAMs.
Much cheaper to build and operate than crewed subs. Could be deployed in numbers against anyone wanting to invade...Taiwan, to choose a random example.
Let's hope that at least this does stir some kind of Sputnik moment in the US. That would be a silver lining of sorts. Currently there does not seem to be the necessary political will or social readiness.
It's one thing to parade something (which may be a mockup), it's quite another to demonstrate capability. The article suggests that the surprise, if it is real, is the demonstrated capability.
The UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) has an article stating that, essentially, this development is not that special and is probably just defense hawks (paraphrased) wanting to go off and spend billions more all over the place.
Also, an anecdote, there's been a lot of articles recommended to me over the past few days about both Russian and Chinese hypersonic missles, so I wouldn't doubt that this is literally a defense hawk doing some shady advertising, as others have mentioned.
Maybe I'm a fool, but what is the point in things like this anymore, like post nuclear do fancy missiles really make that much difference, as in if china for whatever reason sent a hypersonic missile at the US and blew up a city, couldnt the US just do the same in return but slower? I guess I'm asking why is there investment in stuff like this when we know we have far more powerful things already.
These weapons are intended to eliminate or greatly reduce the main strength of the US which is it’s power projection.
These won’t be used against cities but they can take out naval groups and any regional bases the US has.
If China gets to the point where they can effectively contain US power projection they would be able to operate in their region and much of the Asia Pacific without much of a challenge.
Challenging the US blue water capability and thus its power projection with symmetric means is a near fools errand.
This is why China is focusing heavily on “carrier killers” and on slow creep of artificial islands that would allow them to project their own power without matching the US in terms of naval assets not to mention naval experience.
If China can take out CSGs with pretty much no effective counter measures, will the US be willing to send carriers to support Taiwan during/after a Chinese invasion? It's all a game of brinkmanship - might be time for US/China to dig out the old Cold War doctrines on how to win a conventional war without winning so hard the other side feels the need to start slinging nukes.
I wouldn't expect an attack on a carrier group to necessarily lead to all out nuclear War. Seems more likely it would lead to a similar response, to a similarly sized and themed target, if only to save face and demonstrate that an equal response to such attacks will happen.
What's the US going to do? Attack Chinese cities? And then watch their own cities burn?
The US isn’t insane, it pretty much wrote the book on proportional response there is no way that they would escalate from an attack on a military target to glassing civilian population centers.
No US president would issue such an order and even if they would the chiefs of staff would almost most likely disobey it.
The TLDR is MAD equilibrium is being upset by US building out missile defense. US who has 20X more nukes than PRC is eroding PRC minimum deterrence doctrine via improving missile defense. This is destabilizing. Politically, PRC won't discuss arms control unless US willing to discuss missile defense (scaling back), which US can't due to domestic politics. So to reestablish MAD balance PRC has to build more nukes and fractional orbital bombardment capability to circumvent US missile defense. It's attempt to rebalance not destabilize. This is also just default arms race behavior. Pour 100s of billions on missile defense and PRC (and Russia, and even North Korea) has to respond in kind. The other driving factor is nuclear proliferation, US missile defense was developed for states like NK with limited strike capabilities, but the end result is everyone else has to rebalance.
Is it publicly known if US is already working on this capability? Is it a kind of like the Boeing X37-B was able to launch a hypersonic missile with nuclear head?
>The missile missed its target by about two-dozen miles
Article itself rehash of FT article, pretty vague and clumbsy with technical details. Somewhat related from a couple days ago:
>China military researchers pinpoint AI for hypersonic weapons accuracy [0]
...
>PLA scientists say artificial intelligence could write flight algorithm within seconds and be 10 times more accurate
...
>Their study showed an AI-based system could keep a hypersonic weapon on course with an accuracy of about 10 metres (32 feet).
...
>The researchers said physical disturbances to the sensors were inevitable during their assembly, transport and routine maintenance. And each time the weapon is powered up, it affects the hardware, causing further deviations from the factory settings.
...
>Using their method, the AI would start work immediately after launch, before the weapon reached hypervelocity, to calculate its position using the signal from the GPS or BeiDou – China’s navigational positioning system – and compare it with the results generated by the on-board sensors to evaluate the actual condition of the hardware.
PRC building up nuclear capabilities because PRC minimum deterance posture is being unbalanced by US rolling out missile defense. Also ties back to Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley trying to calm PRC down over worries that Trump might start war from last month. Ergo all the new Chinese silo contruction and testing of fractional orbital bombardment. IMO the AI article on improving accuracy is also massive. Outlines a future where PRC has ICBMs with 10M accuracy (CEP?) and can do precision conventional strikes on US assets (think carriers in port).
This kind of perception is notoriously unreliable*, so unless you have actual data to offer, please don't go there here. It leads to much lower-quality discussion, because it invites others to jump in with their own projections about hot/divisive issues, and soon we get locked in a feeling-vs.-feeling conflict with no exit.
* It's good to remember that randomness inevitably includes sequences that feel like they can't possibly be random.
China is a huge country of 1.4B people, including many English-speaking foreigners. It is certainly not a black box. If something is "happening on the ground" you can be sure to know about it if only via VPN, satellite images, etc. But more likely it would be all out in the open on Weibo, etc.
Virtually every organization tries to downplay rather than promote bad news--this is not an excuse to believe every rumor that you hear about that organization or person.
That is an excellent way to trick yourself into a host of verifiably false beliefs propagated by special interest groups, and a testament to the success of Washington's propaganda apparatus.
For example, you would believe that China didn't effectively contain COVID-19 as the CPC and Chinese media claimed, even though there are countless visible correlations that verify, e.g. measures of economic activity that cannot reasonably be spoofed.
I follow a lot special-interest online communities that are getting inundated with off-topic pro-china posts. "The west is corrupt and china will save the west." "The US can't possibly stand up to china." Maybe it's just a phenomenon that's unique to my own filter bubble. I'm not sure.
Yeah I also got several Chinese movie recommendations on Youtube, which was a first. Watched two, surprisingly I don't get them any more.
Not that I care, I still wonder why China doesn't have that much good music, especially rock. Folk is fine and all, but like, Japan and Korea seem way ahead in modern stuff.
I don't think china's political/economic system promotes innovation. you can excel at already defined things, but not come up with something new that the party might disagree with.
You wrote this comment in response to an article about China demonstrating a capability no other state has shown. You may want to reassess your priors.
> but not come up with something new that the party might disagree with.
I think the party is in favor of hypersonic missiles. They often do disagree with cultural output that may question or diminish the supremacy of the CCP.
The question is why China feels the need to do this.
The acknowledged superpowers are China, Russia, and the United States. The prior were in agony in World War II, and action by the latter was instrumental in their preservation. For this, I feel some measure of satisfaction with my country, for defending our true allies in that conflict.
I remember massive armament and food shipments to Stalin, and U.S. bombers flying out of China.
All three tacitly agree upon sovereignty and borders, with a few minor differences (we could mention Taiwan, the Crimea, and perhaps Cuba).
Minus these, I believe that the three can and should enter agreements for the mutual defense of their borders, as we have done before in times of dire need, and may do again.
None should tolerate the invasion of any. If this question were completely resolved, perhaps this particular "cross of iron" would not be necessary.
The surprise isn't the development of hypersonic tech, it's how this was done and the capabilities. The DF-17 mentioned in comments is a relatively well-known missile, with about 2,000 km of range, and delivers a hypersonic glide vehicle called DF-ZF. What happened here is a Long March orbital rocket put a DF-ZF or secret version into space, it orbited the globe, then essentially launched from space at a ground target.