(Zero Hedge) An animated video published by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) showcased hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (HBGV) in a four-minute war propaganda video, reported Global Times.
Chinese media said the weapon might be Dong Feng (“East Wind”), DF-17 for short, is designed to fly at hypersonic speeds and evade existing missile defense systems, such as America’s anti-ballistic missile defense system called: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
Experts told the Times Monday that the HBGV would be impossible for the world’s most advanced missile shields to detect.
The animated video, posted on CASIC’s social media platform Douyin on Friday, shows warfare capabilities of the company’s missiles.
According to the Chineses video captions, translated by the Daily Mail, it described several missiles, including subsonic submarine cruise missiles, subsonic and supersonic anti-ship missiles, supersonic cruise missiles and HBGVs.
Passion News, a media outlet under k618.cn, said the promotion video was the first time a simulated animation of an HBGV has ever been released to the public.
Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Times Monday that HBGV “is essentially a warhead, is stored in the nose of a missile, and will be released once the rocket booster sends it fast and high enough. It will then fly over the upper edge of the atmosphere, changing directions frequently, which makes it very difficult to intercept by anti-missile systems.”
In a December report, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), said China conducted two separate tests of the HBGV in November.
China just showed its hypersonic-BGV in a vid on 08 Oct. Probably a test design model, but AFAIK this is first pics of an actual object 1/ pic.twitter.com/EXIMHkXTEA
— Raymond Wang (@soraywang) November 5, 2017
QQ.com speculated the HBGV could be an aircraft carrier killer with a range of 1,533 miles, enough distance for Mainland China to guard its militarized islands in the South China Sea from American naval forces.
The Pentagon recently sounded the alarm on the proliferation of hypersonic technological advances that are being made around the world.
“Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, said in June, during testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.
In 2015, Lockheed Martin upgraded its THAAD missile system to counter Chinese HBGV threats.
That said, China is a rising power with hypersonic technologies, could deploy HBGVs around the South China Sea as soon as 2020. This move would undoubtedly complicate US naval fleets operating in the western Pacific.The countdown to World War III has started.
