NEW MISSILE TO OUTSTRIP RIVALS WITH KILL RANGE
Surface-to-air weapon will be able to shoot down early-warning aircraft and bombers from an unprecedented distance, research team says
Researchers have designed a surface-to-air missile that will vastly outstrip its rivals with a kill range of more than 2,000km, according to a peer-reviewed paper published by the Journal of Graphics.
Ultra-long-range air defence is considered infeasible, with surface-to-air missiles typically having a flight range of tens of kilometres and the fastest few reaching several hundred kilometres.
The team, led by Su Hua, an associate researcher at Northwestern Polytechnical University, said the weapon would be able to shoot down early-warning aircraft and bombers, preventing them from intervening in possible regional conflicts.
According to the paper, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would issue a warning to any target aircraft’s country of origin and only fire if it failed to turn back. The technology “is of great significance for maintaining regional and global peace and stability”.
The PLA’s brief was for a weapon with low production costs that is also convenient for daily operations, at a maximum 10 metres long and weighing no more than four tonnes to make it suitable for vehicle-mounted mobile launch, the paper said.
Su and his team exceeded expectations, designing an ultralong-range missile at just eight metres and with a mass of 2.5 tonnes. A solid rocket motor will provide the enormous thrust for vertical launch, followed by a ramjet engine to propel the missile in the upper atmosphere.
The paper did not detail the missile’s appearance but the design parameters suggest it may be similar to the Feitian-1 hypersonic vehicle, which has a similar two-stage propulsion system and was successfully tested by the university two years ago.
The Feitian-1 is the world’s first hypersonic vehicle to be fuelled by inexpensive and safe kerosene. Its wing-body fusion design significantly extends its range by allowing it to fly continuously within the atmosphere.
The scientists said real-time data from reconnaissance satellites would guide the new missile, before it switched to its own sensors in the final approach, detonating its warhead when it reached an effective kill range.
China has established a powerful global satellite monitoring network that makes traditional stealth technology – as used by the United States’ B-2 and B-21 bombers – useless.
These satellites are part of China’s “anti-access/area denial” (A2/AD) capabilities that it has been developing to cope with potential military conflicts in hotspots such as the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under mainland control, by force if necessary. Like most countries, the US does not recognise the self-ruled island, but opposes any unilateral attempt to change the status quo and is committed to the island’s defence.
The South China Sea is the subject of competing claims by numerous countries in the region, which occasionally escalate to confrontation between China and its neighbours, many of them allied with the US.
China initially regarded hypersonic weapons as primarily a supplementary means of breaking through the American missile defence system and attacking fixed targets within the US in the event of a conflict.
Technological advances and improved performance of these weapons in recent years have led Chinese scientists and engineers to propose increasing numbers of applications for them.
These have included the possibility of attacking a moving aircraft carrier group with a barrage of hypersonic anti-ship missiles, and sending air-to-air missiles swooping down from near space to engage US stealth bombers.
The PLA’s conventional ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons already cover all US military bases in the first island chain – which runs from the Japanese archipelago to Borneo – including South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. The US military has been gradually reallocating its forces to the second island chain, including its base on Guam, around 2,600km from Taiwan and 3,000km from the mainland.
A key US strategy in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait is to send bomber fleets from Guam to target China’s fleet and coastal infrastructure and prevent the PLA from landing on the self-ruled island.
Earlier this month, the US Air Force tested a hypersonic missile launched from a B-52 bomber near Guam, in what some military experts said was a show of force and capability aimed at China.
[The technology] is of great significance for maintaining regional and global peace and stability RESEARCH PAPER BY THE TEAM
According to its developers, the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon will be able to strike ground targets at speeds exceeding Mach 7 from around 1,600km – previously considered a safe distance.
Despite congressional concerns, the US Air Force plans to purchase hundreds of these missiles, which will also be able to launch from the latest B-21 stealth bomber, at around US$15 million each.
The Northwestern Polytechnical University is a crucial institution for developing cutting-edge weapons in China and has long been subject to comprehensive US sanctions.
Two months after the Feitian-1’s successful 2022 test flight at a military base in China’s northwestern Gobi Desert, Beijing accused the US National Security Agency (NSA) of launching a cyberattack on the university.
Unlike previous statements that were vague about the perpetrators and techniques used, Beijing released details about the operation. Some cybersecurity experts interpreted China’s response as a severe warning.
China alleged that the NSA’s Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) used more than 40 cyber weapons to hack into the university’s internal network and obtain confidential information.
To conceal its true identity, TAO went so far as to attack the network infrastructure of its allies, including Japan and South Korea, using them as stepping stones, according to Beijing.