Seeing as the date of the article was from 2015, I would not be so surprised on the assessment of the then current situation. The WU-14 was in all forms and purposes a test vehicle, so the US was correct in that assessment.
Does the tone of the phrase suggest underestimation, well that might be plausible if one thinks of it as such. And by all accounts, the article has not dismissed the threat with a wave of a hand. Multilayered missile defense is still today the best bet against HGV, is it substantially harder ? Yes, but impossible ? No as HGVs still have to play by the same rules of physics as ballistic missiles with the added benefit of maneuverability, it is a evolutionary threat but not a revolutionary one.
Hyperwarp
I have see 1700 - 2500 km... the HGV range is included for me make sense DF-16 have a range of 1000 -1500 km... B variant ? the glider fly over this difference 700 - 1000 km seems very long ?
Russian Zircon is similar for speed but trajectory different all it is exciting ! new weapons generation and for counter it rail guns or others !
DF-17 ", the world's first hypersonic glider gun
We asked ourselves several questions two months ago at the end of our file "And if it is him the glider Boost-Glide DF-ZF? In which the development of the Chinese hypersonic glider known as DF-ZF was spread as a quick summary. These questions include the real utility of this type of weaponry for the Chinese army and also the "sudden" cessation of tests after seven rather successful tests conducted between 2014 and 2016, which remained unanswered at the time. time lack of additional elements.
But our colleague Ankit Panda, publisher of the site The Diplomat, has relayed this Thursday several very interesting information on the recent progress obtained by the Chinese in the field, revealed by a US government source, which could finally give indications to meet our Questions.
According to the text, US intelligence confirmed two tests of a new Chinese missile, referred to as "DF-17", in November. The particularity of this missile is that it carries a payload type HGV (Hypersonic Glide Vehicle), ie a hypersonic glider.
The first of the two tests took place this year on November 1, shortly after the closing of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, a major political event in China that brings together more than 3,000 local MPs to define the major axes of development of the country. The missile took off from the Jiuquan Space Center in the desert area of western China.
It should be noted that we had already spoken about this test at the time in the file "1st ballistic fire after the 19CPCC Congress", but without being able to indicate precisely what it is about at the time, although irregularities compared to a conventional ballistic test were emphasized and that it was already thought that this could be a DF-16 vector.
The technical essence of the Chinese weapon can be summarized in five points, thanks to Ankit's article:
The hypersonic glider flew about 1,400 km, 60 km from the ground, during a flight that lasted 11 minutes.
The machine hit its target outside Qiemo County, with an accuracy of "a few meters".
The "DF-17" carrier is a MRBM ballistic missile with an estimated range of 1,800 to 2,500 km.
The design of "DF-17" is mainly based on the already operational DF-16B Chinese ballistic missile.
The weapon could reach its first operational stage in 2020.
We also learn that "the missile is designed explicitly for the operational implementation of a HGV and not served as a test bed," according to the same US government source, and that "this is the first glider test hypersonic in the world using a system intended to be operational on the ground ".
The second test, meanwhile, took place two weeks later on November 15 but no details were revealed.
So what can be learned from this new information, assuming it is accurate?
If we refer to the NOTAM airmail messages of November 1st, which indeed confirm the presence of a ballistic activity in western China, we note that the distance between JSLC's firing point dedicated to Short and medium range missile fire and the Qiemo point of navigation located at 38 ° 9'6.00 "N 85 ° 32'12.00" E is approximately 1,300 km, 100 km less than the number indicated by the Americans .
The question then arises as to the actual hypersonic gliding distance of the craft, since the DF-17 carrier missile should first climb well beyond 100 km altitude, in the exo-atmospheric zone, before release his load the hypersonic glider.
The latter will then plunge back to the ground and make a moment of "pull up" to several tens of km from the ground, to win its so-called "QGC", in which the machine will be able to continue its road by "surfing" and this way not propelled.
It is therefore understandable that the "1,400 km" is probably not the gliding distance as indicated, but rather the total distance of the test between the take-off point and the point of impact, which allows us to to deduce that the average speed of the Chinese hypersonic glider would be less than 2 121 m / s, that is very approximately Mach 6.
But if one remains voluntarily pessimistic and considers that the distance of planing should correspond to 2/3 of the complete flight, as noted on the tests similar to-Atlantic, then the average speed of the hypersonic glider Chinese would be even lower to 1 414 m / s or Mach 4 in an approximate manner.
Whether in either case, we can already assume that speed would not be the priority of the moment for this new Chinese weapon, although the word "hypersonic" is usually associated with the notion of very high speed, because compared to a conventional MRBM ballistic missile head that runs between Mach 7 and Mach 9 in the final approach phase, the hypersonic glider will not pose any particular difficulty to an endo or exo anti-missile system -atmosphere such as THAAD and PAC-3 if it is on the speed that he intends to rely.
On the other hand, the more "atypical" flight profile of a hypersonic glider, whose mid-race phase is well in the endo-atmospheric domain, is clearly not that targeted by conventional ABM systems, which "see" rather high with a high elevation angle for ballistic missile heads that "fall" from up there. The flight envelope of today's major anti-missile interceptors is also not suited to this kind of incoming trajectory.
The other question that arises is to know the size of this hypersonic glider, if the carrier is a derivative of the DF-16B missile. The latter being a vector with a diameter of 1.2 meters and having a projection capacity of about 500 kg, we can already doubt the relatively small usable volume of a fixed-wing gear compared to a conventional axisymmetric head . It is assumed that the machine destroys its target thanks to its kinetic energy, which requires a high accuracy of the weapon and therefore a perfect control of its flight.
And we can just remark the precision "metric" of the Chinese machine, as emphasized by the American source. But on this point in particular, we can still have doubts about the evaluation method of US services, because knowing this accuracy of the test is to know, a priori, the exact location of the impact zone, and to have very high precision tracking means to be able to follow in real time, or almost, the tests in order to draw such a conclusion
It should be noted that it is not known if the hypersonic glider has already made lateral maneuvers, another specificity that this type of flying machine seeks, very useful for escaping the potential threats and fooling the vigilance of the defense systems. adverse. During the 4th and 5th trials of DF-ZF, the experimental vehicle has already made what the Americans have described as "extreme maneuvers" and "evasive actions".
When the maturity of the Chinese weapon system, we can notice that during the test of November 1 this year, a very large area of a 300 km radius around Hotan, a city that is more than 500 km from Qiemo, was closed to any overflight under 10 100 meters above sea level.
This caution could then be translated by the still "experimental" but advanced nature of the weapon. It is therefore not surprising to see the United States, which believes that the "DF-17", equipped with hypersonic glider load, could reach the state of Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in 2020. So we can expect further validation fire from the Chinese Rocket Force (PLARF) in the coming months.
In short, we are here with a regional weapon, probably the first of its kind to be deployed operationally, with the aim of thwarting American anti-missile systems increasingly located in East Asia, especially in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Its size would be relatively small and would mainly serve its kinetic energy and the very high accuracy to destroy its target.
It will certainly not replace the numerous short and medium-range ballistic missiles already aimed at these locations, but it is, among other things, a complement and a tactical redundancy that will make it possible to multiply decision-making choices in the future. conflict, and to further "stress" adverse systems and decisions.
Finally, here are the areas and air segments that were closed during the second test of "DF-17" on November 15th. For a question that is unknown, they are different from those of November 1 but suggest the same direction of flight of the craft.
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