China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) recently confirmed the maiden flight and success of Project Tengyun, an air-to-space aircraft development project led by the group. Capable of flying through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, the space plane is seen as one of the key weapons in the world’s struggle for control of the air and the sky in the 21st century.
The Financial Times reported in October that China had conducted hypersonic weapon tests in July and August, sparking great concern among Western powers. The Financial Times also reported on November 22 that the hypersonic weapon tested by China in July and August this year was a hypersonic glide vehicle that could carry a nuclear warhead. This hypersonic vehicle launched a missile during its flight through the atmosphere over the South China Sea.
Some Chinese wemedia have also written that China has made technological breakthroughs in the field of hypersonics and has now surpassed the United States. An article written by “Detail Technology” stated that China conducted three hypersonic vehicle tests in July and August. The July 16 test was a vertical takeoff and horizontal landing test of an airplane carrier, while the July 27 and August 13 tests were tests of a horizontal takeoff and landing airplane, or Project Tengyun’s air and space aircraft. According to the article, the latter two tests were more advanced and practical, indicating that China’s Tengyun spaceplane is already far ahead of its U.S. counterpart.
In October, the U.S. military and political parties expressed concern about the development of Chinese hypersonic technology. U.S. Ambassador for Disarmament Robert Wood said the U.S. is very concerned about China’s hypersonic missile test launch, and that the U.S. originally wanted to avoid developing hypersonic military capabilities, but now has no choice but to follow suit. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the media that China’s hypersonic test launch is a system that travels at extraordinary speeds that no defense system can handle, and that it is very close to the Sputnik Moment of the Cold War. The “Sputnik Moment” refers to the 1957 launch of the Soviet Sputnik I satellite, which signaled the loss of U.S. dominance in space technology.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the test was a routine spacecraft test to verify spacecraft reusability technology, which is important for reducing the cost of spacecraft use and providing a convenient and inexpensive way for humans to use space for peaceful purposes. The Chinese official media quoted relevant space experts as saying that the development of hypersonic military warplanes is still in the concept study and preliminary test stage, and there is no public evidence that any of the hypersonic military warplanes in the test stage already have attack capabilities, while the U.S. military is playing up the threat of Chinese hypersonic weapons in order to get more military spending to invest in hypersonic weapons research and development.
Hypersonic weapons are commonly defined as those that travel at more than five times the speed of sound and can achieve similar effects of space-based kinetic weapons at lower budgets. The idea was proposed by German scientists as early as World War II, when the goal was to glide through the upper atmosphere for the transatlantic bombing of the United States. On this basis, Chinese scientist Qian Xuesen proposed a new theory, called “Qian Xuesen ballistic”, which suggested the possibility of an object capable of sustained gliding flight at very high sonic speeds.
During the Cold War, ballistic missiles became the mainstream, and hypersonic weapons were put on the shelf. But in the 1980s, as anti-missile technology improved and the shortcomings of ballistic missiles were exposed, hypersonic weapons received renewed attention. Unlike ballistic missiles that fly at high altitudes along a fixed parabolic trajectory, hypersonic missiles have a lower trajectory and can hit their targets faster, but more importantly, they are highly maneuverable, making it difficult for the enemy to track and intercept them.
At least five countries, including the United States, Russia and China, are currently developing hypersonic weapons. in December 2018, Russia conducted the first round of tests on hypersonic missiles, and Russian President Vladimir Putin called the missile named “Vanguard” an “absolute weapon” with a maximum range of 4,000 kilometers and a flight speed of 20 to 27 times the speed of sound, which can break through the interception of anti-missile shield systems at any time. In June 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military was developing the world’s fastest hypersonic missile, which would travel 17 times faster than existing missiles in the U.S. arsenal and three times faster than hypersonic missiles from other countries such as Russia or China.
In 2014, the U.S. detected the test launch of a Chinese ballistic missile-delivered HGV weapon, which it named the WU-14 hypersonic vehicle (about 10 times the speed of sound), and in late 2017, U.S. media reported that China had repeatedly detected the test launch of a hypersonic weapon in November, which the U.S. judged to be called the “DF-17,” a medium-range ballistic missile with a range of about 2,000 kilometers and a hypersonic glide body for the final warhead, which the U.S. believes could be the first operational hypersonic weapon in the world’s military history. The DF-17 ballistic missile was publicly unveiled at China’s 70th National Day parade in October 2019.
Hypersonic technology is a key technology that can change the global balance of military power. Currently, the U.S. is spending a lot of money to build up a huge missile defense system around the world, while the missiles belonging to the Chinese military do not have an advantage over the U.S. defense system. Theoretically, any Chinese missile launched from mainland China could be intercepted by U.S. defenses before it enters the atmosphere. If China succeeds in developing, perfecting, and mass-producing hypersonic weapons, then existing U.S. missile defenses could become obsolete.
From international and Chinese media reports, it is a fact that China has made breakthroughs in related technologies, and the U.S. has reason to be concerned. From the U.S. standpoint, because of its absolute advantage in missile defense systems, coupled with insufficient defense spending, the U.S. would relatively prefer to maintain the status quo in this area while competing with China.