China has successfully performed, the seventh test onHypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) dubbed by the Pentagon DF-ZF (WU-14). The new aircraft should be able to travel up to eight times the speed of sound when mass-produced. This means that it could safely dodge the current US missile defense system and hit every part of the planet within an hour.
The test took place last Friday. The DF-ZF has been monitored by the American secret services. It should have been launched from a ballistic missile taken off the Wuzhai polygon in central China. The DF-ZF by licking the edge of the atmosphere then returned to hit targets targeted in the western part of the country.
It was the seventh test for theHypersonic Glide Vehicle Chinese. It should be noted that the Pentagon has encouraged China to adopt greater transparency on defense investment and military objectives, in order to "avoid misjudgments".
The WU-14 is able to carry nuclear heads at a speed higher than Mach 10 (12,359 kilometers per hour) and is immune to current anti-ballistic countermeasures for conventional return heads. The ballistic trajectory of descent through the atmosphere of multiple independent heads is easily predictable, even if the problem is due to their high return speed. However, the problem was partially resolved at the end of the 80 years, with the launch of interceptor missiles designed to destroy multiple independent heads during the return phase.
A hypersonic aircraft such as HGV could re-enter the atmosphere by gliding at very high speed and approaching the target with a relatively flat trajectory, thus decreasing the identification time from enemy systems. The DF-ZF can be transported to launch altitude by various Chinese ballistic missiles, such as the DF-21 (medium-range) and DF-31 and DF-41 (intercontinental), extending the range of the carriers by 12 thousand km.
The Chinese hypersonic weapons program is considered a priority. Once put into service, it could allow China to conduct kinetic attacks anywhere in the world. China plans to implement its new high-speed glide aircraft within 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.
Unlike the United States and China, which have focused on the development of thrust aircraft like the "Hypersonic Glide Vehicle, Russia and India are planning so-called hypersonic cruise missiles. As a thrust aircraft Glide it must first reach an extreme altitude before returning to the atmosphere, the cruise missiles travel on a non-ballistic altitude trajectory, extremely low to evade the early warning radar systems.
(in the photo the US hypersonic vehicle HTV-2 - DARPA)
