Almost impossible to stop, China’s hypersonic missiles

CHINA has made ‘dramatic advances’ in hypersonic missiles that fly too fast to be intercepted, intelligence officials warn.

They said the DF-17 – and its successor the DF-27 – reach speeds approaching some 6,500 miles per hour and they are almost impossible to stop.

China has designed these weapons to destroy aircraft carriers, such as Britain’s flagship vessels HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, over a range of up to 5,000 miles.

The UK, Australia and the United States, who formed the AUKUS alliance, are frantically looking for some sort of preventative measures.

The Chinese ‘Hypersonic Glide Vehicles’ fly on lower trajectory than intercontinental ballistic missiles, making them harder to intercept. One concerned official said: ‘The buzz phrase here is that “speed is the new stealth”. China has prioritised this capability and has generated the world’s leading arsenal of HGVs.

‘It has made dramatic advances in this area in the 2020s. Countering this threat is a priority for AUKUS.

‘Countering the delivery mechanism, which fires the missile, is more effective than countering the missile itself. We would have to hit the bases, hit the launch systems.’ Britain does not have hypersonic missiles while the US is only testing these weapons.

Russia has been utilising much less sophisticated versions of the Chinese HGVs during the conflict in Ukraine.

China’s missiles are capable of carrying nuclear payloads. It is considered likely Beijing would seek to use its HGVs against US and UK navies in the South China Sea.