Brandon J. Weichert
In the opening hours of a US-China war, the DF-17 would crater runways at bases like Kadena in Japan or Andersen in Guam, crippling American airpower in the Indo-Pacific.
Quietly and without much media coverage, the Pentagon’s top military scientists are admitting that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has leapfrogged Uncle Sam, despite the obvious spending gap between the two nations, in the key strategic domain of hypersonic weapons development.
Having poured the equivalent of $10 billion into developing not just a single, advanced hypersonic weapon but an entire ecosystem of such weapons, China has arrayed these lethal weapons along their anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) zone of defense forward-deployed in places, like the South China Sea (SCS),where these systems can reach out and threaten distant US airbases and aircraft carriers.
America Doesn’t Have an Answer to China’s DF-17 Hypersonic Missile
The DF-17 (Dong Feng-17) is a medium-range ballistic missile system developed by China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). It is notable for being one of the first operational hypersonic weapons in the world. The weapon was unveiled during China’s 70th anniversary military parade in October 2019 and is believed to have entered service around that time.
A solid-fueled, road-mobile missile, this weapon allows the PLARF to keep the weapon concealed, its transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) vehicle gives it rapid deployment capabilities. Because of this, the PLARF can employ “shoot-and-scoot” tactics to avoid detection and counterstrikes.
Weighing 33,069 pounds, this two-stage missile boosts a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), designated DF-ZF, to near-space altitudes before the HGV glides back to its target at hypersonic speeds. The system is designed to radically maneuver at those hypersonic speeds, making it nearly impossible for modern air defense systems to knock the HGV out of the air before hitting its intended target.
No comments:
Post a Comment