China tests hypersonic missile
As if we didn’t have enough bad news, there’s this:
China secretly tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, the London-based Financial Times reported. The report said that the missile, which adds a new capability to the Chinese arsenal, “flew through low-orbit space” and may be able to “negate” the U.S. missile defense systems.
“China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught U.S. intelligence by surprise,” the newspaper added.
I’m not at all sure that the Financial Times is aware of what takes US intelligence by surprise, although I have no trouble believing that US intelligence might indeed have been surprised. After all, they are so busy with policing and eavesdropping on the right, what else do they have time for?
Hypersonic missiles are faster, more maneuverable, and harder to detect compared to conventional missile systems. “Hypersonic missiles are much faster and more agile than normal ones, meaning they are more difficult to intercept,” the BBC explained. “They can fly at more than five times the speed of sound and, much like ballistic missiles, can deliver a nuclear warhead,” the broadcaster added.
While the Chinese official denied testing a hypersonic missile, the Chinese state-media taunted the U.S. as it bragged about Beijing’s growing cutting-edge military capabilities…
Besides China, other rogue regimes are also joining the race to acquire hypersonic missile technology. In recent months, Russia and North Korea have also tested their versions of hypersonic weapons.
Trump apparently spoke a number of times about the need to counter such developments. But since everything Trump did was awful, according to the MSM:
The mainstream media, complacent about the Chinese threat, mocked the president for mispronouncing the missile as “hydrosonic” and describing it as “super duper” fast.
The New York Times even dismissed the technology as a hoax. [See this.]
The Biden administration is telegraphing abysmal weakness, both on the military and intelligence fronts (and hardly limited to that; really on all fronts). Whether the weakness is intentional or not, it is a dangerous situation.
What this is is a “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System
Whether the weakness is intentional doesn’t matter much. It exists, and enemies can see it.
As usual, Jen Psaki steps right in it:
“White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to news reports from over the weekend that indicated that China had developed advanced nuclear-capable weapons systems by saying that the Biden administration ‘welcome[s] stiff competition.’ Psaki made the remarks in response to questions from a journalist on whether the reports were accurate and whether the administration was concerned about China’s capabilities.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/psaki-on-communist-china-obtaining-advanced-nuclear-capable-weapons-tech-we-welcome-stiff-competition
Before I was a computer guy, I was an officer in the USAF training to fly B-52G bombers as part of Strategic Air Command. We were trained in all weapons and theories strategic (circa 1990). So let me give some info on this.
This test was a launch of a relatively untested type of warhead on an orbital class rocket launcher. ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, are normally not launchable into orbit. Too little lift by the rocket booster, and, unneeded to get the missile bus, which carries the warheads, where they are targeted. ICBM warheads are by their nature ‘hypersonic’ on re-entry. So ignore all the hype around that. So the speed is not new. What’s new about this is that it is launched on a different type of trajectory with more energy than a typical ICBM. The “FOBS” part. It uses a bigger rocket which launches the bus into a low orbit. Traditional ICBM warheads are relatively accurate. 1km or so. FOBs warheads are less accurate for reasons I will detail. Again, neither FOBs, nor MARVs (maneuverable warheads) are new. What’s new is that is that the Chinese combined existing tech so it launches like a FOBS but uses a MARV warhead, a Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle to fix the accuracy issues of traditional FOBS warheads.
More Detail:
A typical ICBM lobs its payload in a ballistic trajectory, an elliptical orbit, that intersects Earth at two points: launch and target. FOBS, on the other hand, puts the warhead into a full orbit like a conventional satellite. Typically a *low* orbit, but a circular orbit nonetheless. This is harder (bigger rockets needed, harder to aim, ) than an ICBM lob, but there are a few advantages. The biggest advantage is that, being in a low circular orbit, the warhead is below radar detection until it is almost on top of the target. At which point it fires a de-orbit motor and drops out of the sky with very little warning.
The reason why it’s called a “fractional” orbit is that it is generally assumed that it won’t complete a full orbit, but will de-orbit the first time it passes over the enemy. But that does not need to be the case; it could stay in orbit for some time, pretending to be, say, a weather, communications or spy satellite. Additionally, a FOBS system could theoretically launch in *any* direction; instead of Russian or Chinese ICBMs launching over the Pacific or Arctic to reach US targets, they could be launched south, pass over Antarctica and come at the US from Mexico or the Gulf where we have relatively little in the way of either early detection systems or missile defenses.
A disadvantage of FOBS is that the warhead, typically, must be aimed more or less directly at the target, as there is little cross-range to play with. Thus only a few orbits during a day will pass close enough to the target; most orbits will be many hundreds or thousands of miles too far away. But by using a hypersonic glider as the warhead, cross-range is increased. So now something that looks like a mundane satellite launch that will pass nowhere near a US target will now sprout wings and fly straight down to any target.
The US and Russians have a treaty BANNING FOBS; the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, that explicitly forbids the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, which is exactly what FOBS does. The Chinese are supposed to be on board with this treaty as well, but apparently they don’t car. This likely is not a shock to anyone who follows China. This could be construed as very destabilizing choice by the Chinese. IT is de-stabilizing because it moves to negate the MAD doctrine, which has kept the peace between major powers for 70+ years.
I sincerely doubt the actual booster (rocket) launch was a surprise. What was likely a surprise was the payload combined with the FOBS (orbital) nature of the launch. Again, destabilizing. The U.S. and Russia would likely forewarn the other if they were to do a FOBS like launch. It’s a very, frankly, stupid thing to do in the nuclear world. If they had done it in 1990, we could have been scrambling bombers off the runway (no kidding).
Like Neo often says, let’s let this story play out longer than 24 hours. We’ll learn more about exactly what happened and when.
China denies the story. They claim it was a scaled-down reusable reentry vehicle similar to the Shuttle.
Thanks, AManOfTheWest.
“China denies the story. They claim it was a scaled-down reusable reentry vehicle similar to the Shuttle.”
And the difference is… only in what the payload is.
AManOfTheWest,
You clearly possess greater familiarity than I but I cant help but take a bit of issue with “IT is de-stabilizing because it moves to negate the MAD doctrine, which has kept the peace between major powers for 70+ years.”
What leads me to my objection is the existence of the US Navy’s Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs). As long as they remain an effective threat, MAD remains a deterrent.
Been posting their changes for years… after so much has changed from our default assumptions and more, this one thing is enough to get a thread? there are bigger “foot a games” than this one, some very interesting… scary too for halloween
I worked at NASA for a decade. I concur with AManOfTheWest’s comments including the caution to wait and learn more.
Geoffrey Britain. You do know we left MAD a while back? MAED followed… ie.
Mutually assured destruction became mutually assured economic destruction…
Mutually-Assured Economic Destruction
By Mark Thompson Oct. 10, 2011
https://nation.time.com/2011/10/10/mutually-assured-economic-destruction/
This is a riff on the Cold War’s MAD – Mutually-Assured Destruction – doctrine that kept U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger alert (Surprise! Many of them still are!) to deter the other side. As Rand notes:
The more important thing to have paid attention to is ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ and to read it… but that was not as flashy as FOBS etc..
“Apple is not going to be shipping iPads from its factories in China.”
So long as it can, Apple will be shipping iPads along the Trans Siberian Rail Line or via Pooh’s Belt and Road SE or S Asian Ports.
Apple is no friend of the United States of America. Amazon, FaceBook, Microsoft will be passive-aggressively fighting for the PRC, too. But don’t forget Legacy Big Business: The Tiddly Winks will probably Fedex and UPS part of their first strike package to you 😛 I’m not kidding.
I wonder how many ethnic Chinese now work at critical points of failure in the US Nuclear Triad. I mean it would just be racist to exclude them and to have emigrated and taken an oath or to have been born on US soil and then indoctrinated to hate, oops love the place by the educational system and culture at large just guarantees that blood won’t be thicker than water when SHTF.
The Open Society and its Enemies… Oh kill me gently please. The Open Society *is* your enemy. You don’t need to be a RAND Nuclear War Game Theorist Maven ca. 1955 to nut this super tough thinking stuff out. All it takes is a single Not An Open Society capable of concurrently chewing gum and walking to take you down… Ongoing Western Civilizational collapse aside.
Re the Hypersonic Super Scary Thing:
The thing with the Chinese is that they can iterate faster than we can. Largely because they now make everything. Factory of the World and all that. More engineers, more scientists. And they cleaned up their military industrial complex corruption in the last 15 years. While yours was becoming more corrupt and sclerotic.
Sure they steal a lot of tech. But again forget the Copes. It’s war by other means. If we’re stupid enough to let them do it, then we deserve to lose. The thing is that once they have it they can’t unlearn it and there’s nothing to say that they cannot improve upon it faster than we can. It’s very obvious that they can manufacture at scale faster and iterate faster.
Missiles aside, since forever the Chinese have had to rely on purchasing Russian engines for fighter jets and bombers because they lagged in high temperature metallurgy and precision machining. Apparently they’ve cracked this now, too.
What they don’t have is 250 years of Naval tradition and know-how. What you do have is a Navy hell-bent on destroying that 250 years. At some point those curves intersect. You’ve already got women on the boomers. So the most critical part of your nuclear triad has been degraded by the inevitable sexual tensions and shenanigans. Boomers first because bigger and more room for female facilties. But don’t worry… they’re rushing ahead to estrogenise the attack subs too.
Trump Secretary of State Pompeo said we were in Cold War Two with China. Anyone recall his great speech in late July last year?
It feels like years. But it laid out how to use the dollar to challenge China by using the Swiss based Bank of International Settlements (BIS), on Hong Kong.
It was to be a demonstration to teach China how the US could crash their economy.
Oops, Covid. Just in time!
As was demonstrated in 1941/42, 250 years of tradition doesn’t mean crap. Japan mastered naval warfare in 20 or so years, and they were substantially better than us well into the 40’s.
bobby:
How did that work out for Japan in 1943, 1944, and 1945? It didn’t work out after mid-November 1942. So yeah, ‘the Japanese grand plans for the decisive naval battle and reliance of night fighting and the Type 93 torpedo served them well until it didn’t at all. How well did their traditions serve them on the sea and on the islands? And once the US Navy came to grips with that 1941 technology and fixed their own torpedoes the Japanese were dead men walking. Pack sand.
The IC was so intent on opposing Trump, they missed this all together. Lets Go Brandon.
bobby:
.
Yep those Bushido traditions served them well when every urban area in Japan was charcoal and soot by late 1945. Because they mastered naval warfare in 20 years, but kept it for 18 months at most. Their gamble on germ warfare didn’t pan out either. Do tell.
Seems to me that the use of something like this would be suicidal. There must be plenty of our spy satellites in high orbit that can look down and track a rocket like this from launch to impact. If it was an act of war, our nuclear subs would launch their nuclear warheads and good bye China. Unless our current missile defense is capable of destroying ballistic missiles in flight, these hypersonic missiles wouldn’t change much. In fact, their speed is only about one tenth of a ballistic missile giving more warning time. Somebody is trying to start yet another hysteria.
@om:
High on Cope-ium… You gotta kick that habit.
Where are all the factories and engineers and machinists of the 1940s?
You’re like hypersexed eunuch Boris Johnson waffling on about Their Finest Hour.
Stop living in the past.
And take three guesses who hate the Japanese intensely for past misdeeds and who have studied closely and learned from the things they got right in their insanely fast ramp up from Perry to Crossing the Russian T at Tsushima and what they got wrong from hubris and geostrategic congenital weakness after WWI. The prime themes in Chinese military historical analysis apart from how to win a Civil War (something might interest you) are how they missed the boat cf. Japan and modernization in C19 2H and how America defeated Japan in WWII.
What have you and your people learned lately? Pashto irregular verbs?
Zaphod:
You don’t need the fanciest toy from Silicon Valley and the CCP sweat shops to surf gab and throw outl little cute inside jargon: Copium, cuck, ethnic slurs, and race bait. You are living and lying for Xi.
We know about Civil Wars, shill. You know race wars? That civil war that Mao won worked out well for the Han didn’t it? And how is Evergrand working out for them now, shilly?
File under Asiatic Hive Mind Bug Men Throw Away Their Lives Cheaply:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3152761/chinas-military-tests-nurses-nighttime-island-landing
“A new digital health monitor has been designed for troops to wear that would automatically report their condition and location. Based on the data, the AI would decide which soldier should get treated first and guide the nearest medic to them, according to a study by the PLA Naval Medical University in Shanghai.”
They could have spent that money on Diversity Training instead. Lost opportunity! Lose out to the Open Society again, Chinkies!
What are we paying billions to the CIA and IC for? How could they miss this? No spies? No signals intercepts?
The Fake News yammered about Russia for five years and it was always about China. Always. Russia is nothing.
I firmly convinced China intentionally released the Wuhan virus. It was worth it to get rid of Trump.
Russia and the existential ancestral horror it represents is everything to a certain type of Atavist disproportionately represented in the commanding heights of government/academia/media/oligarch-donor blob.
In a sane world Russia would be the USA’s strategic ally. Both have reasons to to want to contain China. I hope by this stage nobody thinks that we’re governed by logical people.
Xi’s shill has seen the future and it is Han. Heard that line before. That’s always the problem with the future see’ers; their visions are mostly reflections of themselves IMO.
Shill on
Got out of Air Defense–Nike Herc–just about the time ABM work was starting. So I was reasonably equipped to follow the public areas of discussion including the contentious SDI.
The point of missile defense is not to put an impenetrable shield over CONUS. Impossible. The point is to preserve sufficient resources such as a National Command Authority–supposedly, there is never a time when all of the line of succession including cabinet secretaries are in DC at the same time. Somebody has to be someplace else. People have to travel on business and take vacations and so forth so it’s not an onerous scheduling job.
And the other is retaliatory capacity so that putting in a first strike results in total devastation. We might be ruined but the Russians would be too beat up to enjoy it. IOW, deterrence.
One of the nutty objections to SDI was that we might figure we’re so safe we can shoot first and avoid retaliatory fire, thus solving the Russia problem for once and for all. Those who made this objection didn’t object to Russia’s attempts in the same line. Only so much time in a day, I guess.
Point is, delivering nukes in a new, shiny toy is hardly relevant unless they can take out our retaliatory capacity or leave Biden trying to figure out what to do.
As Gingrich said, the best way to get a nuke into the US is to hide it in a shipment of cocaine and send it into the Port of Miami.
How much would such a missile cost? And how would that compare to a standard ICBM?
@Philip Sells:
No idea. Lots. But Chinese don’t have to build a bit in Senator for General Dynamics’ home state and a bit in Senator for Acme Staples’ home state, etc.. etc… and no quotas for Wise Latinas and Homos and Trannies and Wimminz and Black Owned Bidnesses.
I see the big problem the US faces being one of being unable to react meaningfully in any meaningful timeframe to an emerging technological threat. This is not the Old Soviet Union here. Chinese move at light speed cf. them and significantly faster than sclerotic US Mil procurement system.
One silver lining: Doesn’t take a brain the size of a planet to figure out that the Boeing X-37 spaceplane could pack a bucket of sunshine surprise and plonk itself and its payload in all sorts of surprising places during de-orbit — the thing *can* fly after all. But how many of these exist? 2? 3? And loading it up and slapping it on top of a booster takes time and you can bet that every Panda Express within a thousand km of Vandenberg and Kennedy has their noses to the ground.
The “related links” at the Daily Wire story are more alarming than Psaki’s inanity.
Can you also believe that those evil Communist Chinese Hive-mind Bugmen have rules stopping this or that media elite pumping the population full of violent, degenerate, transgressive images and ideas?
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3152766/squid-game-too-dark-chinese-adaptation-says-executive-iqiyi-baidus
Evil, evil censorship. Censorship! Their inability to tolerate diversity of thought will surely spell their end!
The Humanity! Call the ADL.. errrr the Kimchi Kahal! (The Tourette’s kicks in every once in a while.)
“…Kimchi Kahal…”
Truly one really must explore this strange, sordid and spicy link between the Choson and the Chosen….
But carefully, carefully…cuz you never know what might turn up….
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-the-talmud-became-a-best-seller-in-south-korea
File under: Instant carminative gonna get you…
Oh, so the CCP has managed, centrally planned so to speak, to bypass all corruption inherent in government and in large organizations, unlike especially, in the USA. How? Xi! That Scarecrow needs a brain.
@Barry Meislin:
Nicely played there with the Choson Chosen.
Koreans go a-Briskering. Well they never cease to surprise. I should have thought to google. Those kids are in for a shock when they emigrate and open a bodega in Inglewood and meet their assailant’s pro bono public defender after the first time they get held up or mugged.
Don’t count out the Japanese.
Have I mentioned the Fugu Plan before?
https://www.henrymakow.com/japanese_tried_to_make_deal_wi.html
Who says Japanese Military Intelligence were a bunch of humorless bastards?
No doubt; but Koreans are way too smart to rely on “the authorities”, methinks.
(After the Rodney King-fest, word got around pretty fast).
…and I always thought the “Fugu plan” was repackaged as “Tora, Tora, Tora” (or something)…
…THAT was an interesting link—part fascination, part low comedy… (e.g., did Mao really change his name from “Cohen” to “Zedong”? Curious minds want to know…)
OTOH, there is a book that gets down to the nitty-gritty where the “We-Can-Control-Our-Jews” Japanese are concerned:
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Jews-Isaiah-Ben-Dasan/dp/B000HA3LEK
(I’m pretty sure I can get it for you wholesale….)
Note, however, that things do get “worse”, perhaps even “hypsersonically” worse (depending of course on one’s fears and obsessions):
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/china-discovers-talmud-and-the-kabbalah/
(As they say in China, “Oy”… Not just in China, mind you…)
At the end of the day, though, Wikipedia (for once) dishes up some hope in the form of “Safe Fugu” (quite possibly served up with liberal portions of detoxified death caps…for the culinarily adventurous…):
“Researchers have determined that a fugu’s tetrodotoxin comes from eating other animals infested with tetrodotoxin-laden bacteria, to which the fish develops insensitivity over time.[10] As such, efforts have been made in research and aquaculture to allow farmers to produce safe fugu. Farmers now produce poison-free fugu by keeping the fish away from the bacteria; Usuki, a town in ?ita Prefecture, has become known for selling non-poisonous fugu.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu
(No doubt it doesn’t quite taste the same….)
Le’haim!!
BTW, that’s quite an entertaining site ye’ found yerself there.
Lots of juicy articles.
My favorite (thus far—I’m not sure I have enough time to discover all of its finest fruits) is the COVID-related:
“BLACK LAKE, SASKATCHEWAN FIRST NATION CHILDREN & WOMEN BEING HUNTED! WAKE UP CANADA!”
https://www.bitchute.com/video/2uOYWhVdzbBJ/
(Kinda reminds one of “Atrocity Week”, well, in a way….)
2014. That’s the year China made it known they were developing hypersonic missiles and cruise missiles. Last week’s test flight was the 8th aerial test.
Oct. 1, 2019. That’s the day China included the DF-17 hypersonic missile in their National Day military parade. The cruise missile tested last week was designated DF-ZF by the Pentagon while it was being designed.
Sep. 20-27, 2021. That is the date of the most recent flight test of the USAF hypersonic cruise missile that also flies suborbital at Mach-5 and is nuclear capable. The US missile has been in development since 2013 by Raytheon Corp in Tucson.
Dec. 26, 2018. That is the date on which Russia launched their Avangard hypersonic cruise missile over the Ural Mtns to a target in Siberia. At the claimed Mach-27, Avangard covered the 6000 kilometers before it was launched.
No one was surprised at China’s missile launch, except maybe to say, “What! They launched TODAY? Damn. I lost the pool.”
Financial Times? Really?
I don’t believe **anything** that comes from the legacy media anymore. They have shown over and over that if they don’t know the facts, they will happily make them up out of thin air.
However, that doesn’t mean that I am not concerned about China’s capabilities and intentions – especially with clown-world in charge on our side.
“AManOfTheWest” has a very good synopsis. My experience is similar to his except on the Navy side of things. Have a look at any photo of the latest Chinese SSBN submarine, and then look at a photo of any US “George Washington” class SSBN. Look familiar? The GW class was commissioned over 60 years ago. Yeah, we’ve been doing this sort of thing for a very long time.
Do I think our intelligence services were surprised? I doubt it. I do, however, believe that the reporters at “Financial Times” were surprised.
I don’t see a link to this article here in the thread, and don’t remember how I found it, but there are a few more technical details for those interested.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42772/china-tested-a-fractional-orbital-bombardment-system-that-uses-a-hypersonic-glide-vehicle-report
@ Zaphod
Very interesting article on the medic training.
Question to the resident experts: does our military do that kind of fine-tuning when they play war games?
Also, it linked to this post which seems to have some bearing on the hypersonic missile situation.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3152179/china-military-researchers-pinpoint-ai-hypersonic-weapons?module=hard_link&pgtype=article
“The Financial Times says that the tested hypersonic glide vehicle missed its target by a couple of dozen miles, but that is hardly reassuring considering the capabilities that are apparently in development here.” – thedrive.com
Must not have had the AI installed on the missile that they just tested.
BTW:
The FT story is behind a paywall for me; if our IC was as surprised as the media reported, how did they know what the target was, so that they could figure out it was missed?
@AesopFan:
Don’t know anything about US Combat medicine. Imagine it’s pretty good for anti-insurgency work because they’ve been playing at it in the various Sandpits for 30 years now. Full-on air and amphibious invasion medical support is another ball of wax I guess given Quantity having a Quality all of its own.
My guess is that the article about training of PLA combat nurses/medics under simulated battlefield conditions is targeted mainly at the domestic audience to reassure them that their troops will be getting the best of everything. It’s no longer the Korean War Human Wave PLA. The Past is a Different Country ™.
China is not so simple and cartoonish as people imagine. You cannot censor the sun coming up in the morning — all you can do is put a positive spin on it. They’re not going to be able to hide scale of casualties if it ever kicks off. So best put a positive story out there about how everything is being done to improve combat medical capabilities.
Too good not to share –
https://babylonbee.com/news/arms-race-heats-up-just-as-china-reveals-space-nukes-america-responds-with-trans-admiral