China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

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Hendrik_2000

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This completely muddled hack-job of an article manages to conflate hypersonic missiles with HGVs, which are two entirely different technologies. The author even directly (and erroneously) calls the X-51 Waverider an "HGV". It is also patently ridiculous to compare the success rate of a hypersonic missile with an HGV, whose technological complexity is orders of magnitude less: "the U.S. program has had a much lower test launch success rate (25 percent), compared to China’s 83 percent". Seriously?

Yes the author is correct and she did compare apple to apple . I suggest you do your home work before responding in knee jerk fashion .
There are 2 program in US hypersonic development one is glide vehicle just like China did and the other is using scram engine
China did more test than us 7 vs 3 and Sofar China has only 1 failure
The falcon program experience 2 test failure and the army program also ended in failure And so do the scram jet test
Flight testing
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Launch of HTV-2a on a Minotaur IV Lite rocket
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Falcon HTV-2 baseline flight test trajectories
The HTV-2's first flight was launched on 22 April 2010.
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The HTV-2 glider was to fly 4,800 miles (7,700 km) across the
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to
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at Mach 20.
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The HTV-2 was boosted by a
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rocket launched from
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, California. The flight plan called for the craft to separate from the launch vehicle, level out and glide above the Pacific at Mach 20.
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Contact was lost with the vehicle nine minutes into the 30-minute mission.
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In mid-November, DARPA stated that the first test flight ended when the computer autopilot "commanded flight termination" after the vehicle began to roll violently.
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A second flight was initially scheduled to be launched on August 10, 2011, but bad weather forced a delay.
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The flight was launched the following day, on 11 August 2011. The unmanned Falcon HTV-2 successfully separated from the booster and entered the mission's glide phase, but again lost contact with control about nine minutes into its planned 30-minute Mach 20 glide flight. Initial reports indicated it purposely impacted the Pacific Ocean along its planned flight path as a safety precaution.
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Army Hypersonic Missile Fails in Second Test
Advanced Hypersonic Weapon test aborted shortly after launch
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Artists impression of the Falcon HTV-2 hypersonic aircraft / AP

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August 25, 2014 5:00 am

The Army’s test of an advanced hypersonic weapon failed shortly after takeoff early Monday, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The failure is a setback for a key part of the Pentagon’s strategic weapon program of building arms that can attack any point on earth in 30 minutes.

An unmanned U.S. military jet designed to fly at hypersonic speeds and travel from London to New York in just 45 minutes has failed during a trial as it crashed into the Pacific Ocean within seconds of its launch.

The test had called for a five-minute flight off the coast of southern California at Mach 6- up to 7,300 kmph — six times the speed of sound.

The X-51A Waverider was dropped from a B-52 bomber on Wednesday and launched by a rocket booster as planned but the flight was over in seconds after a control fin malfunctioned, said the U.S. Air Force in a statement. The faulty control fin meant that the vehicle’s flight ended before a specially-designed “Scramjet” engine could be ignited, it said.
 

Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
Yes the author is correct and she did compare apple to apple . I suggest you do your home work before responding in knee jerk fashion .
There are 2 program in US hypersonic development one is glide vehicle just like China did and the other is using scram engine
China did more test than us 7 vs 3 and Sofar China has only 1 failure
The falcon program experience 2 test failure and the army program also ended in failure And so do the scram jet test
Of course it's apples to oranges. The author directly compared failure rates from a US hypersonic missile (X-51A) to a Chinese HGV (DF-ZF); she did not compare US's HGV (HTV-2) to the DF-ZF, which would be an apples to apples comparison. She even called the X-51A an "HGV", which glaringly betrays her lack of knowledge on this subject. There is no "knee jerk" reaction here. Just a badly written article.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Of course it's apples to oranges. The author directly compared failure rates from a US hypersonic missile (X-51A) to a Chinese HGV (DF-ZF); she did not compare US's HGV (HTV-2) to the DF-ZF, which would be an apples to apples comparison. She even called the X-51A an "HGV", which glaringly betrays her lack of knowledge on this subject. There is no "knee jerk" reaction here. Just a badly written article.

I don't know where did she said the X51A is a HGV . Semantic aside the HTV 2 are complete failure . 2 test both end up in the ocean.
No further test are planned because they are too ambitious . Did you even bother to read the article?
 

Iron Man

Major
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I don't know where did she said the X51A is a HGV . Semantic aside the HTV 2 are complete failure . 2 test both end up in the ocean.
No further test are planned because they are too ambitious . Did you even bother to read the article?
She actually lumps the X-51A into the HGV category multiple times in her article, which leads me to wonder if YOU even bothered to read your own article.

In any case, "semantics" is EXACTLY her problem. She is obviously unable to distinguish between air breathing hypersonic vehicles and the far more technologically simple hypersonic glide vehicles. You are also now trying to defend her article by comparing HGV to HGV, something she distinctly did NOT do. The US played around with HGVs but then decided to skip this and go straight to air-breathing hypersonics. It is unquestionably ahead of China in this field.
 

Blitzo

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The US played around with HGVs but then decided to skip this and go straight to air-breathing hypersonics. It is unquestionably ahead of China in this field.

Ahead in terms of what, general hypersonic vehicles of all types, or only air breathing hypersonic vehicles?

If it's the former, well I think that's debatable because we'd need to quantify just how HGVs really compare with air breathers not only considering the relative successes that each side may have made in both domains but also the realistic utility of those two types of vehicles in the near future.

If you only mean the domain of air breathing hypersonic vehicles, that is a more plausible statement, but unfortunately we have little to no info about where the various Chinese hypersonic air breathing vehicles are at, to make a statement with confidence. After all, it's far easier to test hypersonic air breathers without being picked up by foreign space monitoring systems, compared to HGVs (which is really the only reason we know about DF-ZF/Wu-14 at all).
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
She actually lumps the X-51A into the HGV category multiple times in her article, which leads me to wonder if YOU even bothered to read your own article.

In any case, "semantics" is EXACTLY her problem. She is obviously unable to distinguish between air breathing hypersonic vehicles and the far more technologically simple hypersonic glide vehicles. You are also now trying to defend her article by comparing HGV to HGV, something she distinctly did NOT do. The US played around with HGVs but then decided to skip this and go straight to air-breathing hypersonics. It is unquestionably ahead of China in this field.

That is more statement of faith and hubris rather than reality
Let face it the waverider was tested 4 times and only one test can be considered successful.And no test since then.So she is correct 23% success rate
The Boeing X-51 (or X-51 WaveRider) is an
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at Mach 5 (3,300 mph; 5,300 km/h), an altitude of 70,000 feet (21,000 m). The aircraft was designated X-51 in 2005. It completed its first powered hypersonic flight on 26 May 2010. After two unsuccessful test flights, the X-51 completed a flight of over six minutes and reached speeds of over Mach 5 for 210 seconds on 1 May 2013 for the longest duration hypersonic flight.

China might be behind in submarine or jet engine design .But when it come to missile design they are up there with the best.
China did have their own version of wave rider and they did test successfully last year I think.

But due to secretive and opacity of Chinese weapon design we have no data. But that doesn't mean they are behind.
We know that because the chief designer of the scram jet is awarded with prize at public commendation
 
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Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
Ahead in terms of what, general hypersonic vehicles of all types, or only air breathing hypersonic vehicles?

If it's the former, well I think that's debatable because we'd need to quantify just how HGVs really compare with air breathers not only considering the relative successes that each side may have made in both domains but also the realistic utility of those two types of vehicles in the near future.

If you only mean the domain of air breathing hypersonic vehicles, that is a more plausible statement, but unfortunately we have little to no info about where the various Chinese hypersonic air breathing vehicles are at, to make a statement with confidence. After all, it's far easier to test hypersonic air breathers without being picked up by foreign space monitoring systems, compared to HGVs (which is really the only reason we know about DF-ZF/Wu-14 at all).
Fine then, at least based on publicly available information, the US can easily be judged to be ahead in air-breathing hypersonics (scramjets). The US holds the world's record for endurance at 210 seconds at Mach 5 with the Waverider. I would actually say that China is probably ahead in glide vehicle technology, but then again this technology is orders of magnitude simpler than air-breathing technology, and seems to have been dropped by the US in favor of the latter.

That is more statement of faith and hubris rather than reality
Let face it the waverider was tested 4 times and only one test can be considered successful.And no test since then.So she is correct 23% success rate
The Boeing X-51 (or X-51 WaveRider) is an
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research
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aircraft for
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at Mach 5 (3,300 mph; 5,300 km/h), an altitude of 70,000 feet (21,000 m). The aircraft was designated X-51 in 2005. It completed its first powered hypersonic flight on 26 May 2010. After two unsuccessful test flights, the X-51 completed a flight of over six minutes and reached speeds of over Mach 5 for 210 seconds on 1 May 2013 for the longest duration hypersonic flight.

China might be behind in submarine or jet engine design .But when it come to missile design they are up there with the best.
China did have their own version of wave rider and they did test successfully last year I think.

But due to secretive and opacity of Chinese weapon design we have no data. But that doesn't mean they are behind.
We know that because the chief designer of the scram jet is awarded with prize at public commendation
"Hubris" is conflating glide vehicles with scramjet missiles and trying to equivilate the two by comparing their failure rates. Of course scramjets are going to have higher failure rates; on the other hand, this higher failure rate literally means nothing when compared to the lower failure rate of glide vehicles because they are not the same technologies, something that both you and the author have obviously failed to grasp.
 

Hyperwarp

Captain
From the same series posted by by78:

DF-5A
DF5_2.jpg
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Fine then, at least based on publicly available information, the US can easily be judged to be ahead in air-breathing hypersonics (scramjets). The US holds the world's record for endurance at 210 seconds at Mach 5 with the Waverider. I would actually say that China is probably ahead in glide vehicle technology, but then again this technology is orders of magnitude simpler than air-breathing technology, and seems to have been dropped by the US in favor of the latter.

I'd agree with this statement broadly, although I'd only support the HGV vs air breathing technology comparisons with some nuances, namely being that the US dropped HGV tests after a number of failures, including not only the very high speed Mach 20 HTV-2, but also the Mach 10 AHW (closer to DF-ZF) which included one successful test and one failure.

OTOH the continued number of successful tests by the Chinese system says to me they're looking to operationalize the weapon, so I think HGVs have the potential to be fielded as an operationally useful weapon.
Air breathers, I think are at a far lower stage of maturity and while the US may have an edge in testing so far, the actual long marathon to fielding an operational air breathing hypersonic weapon I think is still relatively far away.
 
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