A few hours ago, China successfully carried out the sixth test on the "Hypersonic Glide Vehicle" (HGV) nicknamed by the Pentagon "WU-14". Considered a success, the new aircraft should be able, when produced in serious, to travel up to eight times the speed of sound. This means that it could easily avoid the current US anti-missile defense system. The test was monitored by US intelligence agencies.
It should be noted that the Pentagon has encouraged China to adopt greater transparency on defense investments and military objectives, in order to "avoid errors of assessment".
The WU-14 is able to carry nuclear warheads at a speed higher than Mach 10 (12,359 kilometers per hour). The HGV is practically immune to the current anti-ballistic countermeasures for conventional re-entry warheads. The ballistic descent trajectory through the atmosphere of the multiple independent heads is easily predictable even if the problem related to their high re-entry speed remains. Problem, however, partly solved at the end of the 80 years, with the production of interceptor missiles designed to destroy the multiple independent warheads in the re-entry phase. A hypersonic aircraft such as the HGV could re-enter the atmosphere by gliding at very high speed and approaching the target in a relatively flat trajectory, thus decreasing the identification time from enemy systems.
The WU-14 can be transported at launch altitude by various Chinese ballistic missiles, such as the DF-21 (medium range) and the DF-31 and DF-41 (intercontinental), extending the range of the carriers by 12 thousand. The Chinese hypersonic weapons program is considered a priority. Once put into service, the WU-14 could allow China to conduct kinetic attacks anywhere in the world in minutes. China plans to implement its new high-speed planing aircraft by the 2020. The Chinese hypersonic program provides the first scramjet aircraft within the 2025.
The new frontier of military technology is hypersonic speed. Hitting a hypersonic aircraft is not currently possible due to the time it takes for defense systems to come up with an answer. The initial detection, the tracking and the solution of fire still requires time (we always speak of seconds) but that could be too many considering the hypersonic regime. If a combined attack between traditional ballistic and hypersonic missiles were launched, even the best existing anti-missile defense would have no way out.
(in the photo the CASIC Kuaizhou-1 one of the potential launch systems)
