From Henri K on the DF-17
And a google translation...
We had known about it since January 2014, the date of its first test flight west of China, but we did not know at the time what it really is and for what purpose China launched its development in 2009. The Americans first gave him the name "WU-14" and then "DF-ZF", before revealing, in 2017, his official reference: DF-17.
It is therefore exactly 10 years after the beginning of the program that China decided to present it to the public last Tuesday in Beijing, during a large military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
Visually, the DF-17 looks like the combination of a single-stage ballistic missile and a "mini-shuttle", which is actually a hypersonic glider. The latter has a different form of maneuverable bi-conical heads of Chinese ballistic missile, but also the HTV-2 of the USAF or the AHW of the US Army.
This is a kind of "Wing Body", a hybrid configuration called integrated fuselage, with a very large boom and four pivotable rear fins, all mounted on a TEL vehicle (Tractor-Rotor-Launcher)) 10 wheels, a priori 10 × 10 (①).
The white paint on the forward tip of the craft seems to suggest the presence of radar guidance, which could be provided by Institute No. 38 of the CETC group if one correctly interprets an article published by the Chinese radar operator. According to China National Radio (CNR), the missile-glider, "using various guiding methods," has already "accurately destroyed several different target types in test shots" (②).
While no technical details of DF-17 have yet been given today, the official presentation of this new member of the family of "Dong Feng" missiles (东风, "Eastern Wind" bed) emphasizes that a conventional load missile.
"DF-17 is a new generation conventional weapon of short to medium range. Developed to conduct precision hits at all times, in multiple directions and from multiple angles, the system has many notable features such as shorter turnaround time, longer maneuvering distance, greater effective range, power greater strike force and greater penetration ability ".
In Chinese military jargon, "short to medium range" for a ballistic missile actually corresponds to a range of between 1,000 and 3,000 km.
Operational level, and still according to the official presentation of the parade, the sixteen TEL of DF-17 participating in the parade come from two different brigades of the Chinese Rocket Force, but both come from the same "Base" that had been led by Major General YANG Ye Gong (杨 业 功).
This information clearly indicates that these two brigades equipped with DF-17 belong to Base No. 61, formerly Base No. 52, whose units are mainly deployed along the east coast of China, facing Taiwan, Japan and Japan. the peninsula of Korea.
It is a "regional" weapon, just like the DF-11, the DF-15 and the DF-16 before it.
It should be noted that Base No. 61 is the first entity of the Chinese Rocket Force to have conducted "ballistic missile salvage tests" and also passed "penetration tests at areas guarded by anti-missile systems. (③).
After the official elements come now more "unofficial" information, which goes from the most wacky to the most denigrating, and it requires a long work of sorting and filtering to draw really useful elements.
We learn for example from a source close to the group CASIC, yet competitor of the CCAC, manufacturer of the DF-17, that the new hypersonic weapon is "the cheapest" among the weapons of the Chinese rocket force that marched on October 1st. .
If this sounds normal considering that most of the missiles shown on the parade are of the strategic order - MRBM DF-26, ICBM DF-31AG and DF-41, as well as SLBM JL-2 - it is still amazing that the DF-17 is more "economical" than the new DF-100 supersonic cruise missile.
But if this is confirmed, then it will support some institutional texts according to which the DF-17 missile-carrier engine is focused on "high performance, low cost, and capable of mass production".
As for the official announcement on the entry into service of the DF-17 in the first range units once the parade is completed, it is thought that it is an operational deployment (正式 列 装), after the validation shots (试验 定型) and transformation (换 型 转 训) were successfully conducted by the brigades in question.
For the characteristics of the missile and the hypersonic glider, the most reasonable estimates give the following figures: A length of 14.4 meters for 14 tonnes at takeoff, including 1.4 tonnes for the planer head and the equipment compartment . The range is estimated at 1,700 km with a speed of 3,200 m / s at the end of the powered phase.
And applying data revealed by US intelligence and relayed by our colleague Ankit Panda (see our file "DF-17, the world's first hypersonic glider gun" published in 2017) in formulas patented by the group CASC, including by researchers having been identified as the designer of the DF-17, we obtain a planing distance of about 1.438 km, for a fineness of 3, an almost equilibrium flight altitude 60 km from the ground and a terminal speed of 1.360 m / s.
It is also not excluded that the hypersonic glider is equipped with some propulsion in the equipment compartment, but this remains to be confirmed.
Finally, we can notice the relatively short duration between the beginning of the program in 2009 and the entry into service of the weapon system in 2019, a total of 10 years, including an intensive test phase between January 2014 and April 2016 where at least 7 trials were clearly identified and confirmed. This could be reflected on the one hand by the emergence of the vital need to have weapons that can counteract the anti-missile systems that are starting to mass on the first chain of islands, around China, and secondly by a clear positioning of the project which consists in rapidly providing an industrializable and usable product, by relying on technological achievements resulting from pre-study phases previously carried out.
To a lesser extent, therefore, the DF-17 can be considered as a "Quick-win" and "Stop gap" weapon, to address problems of the mass deployment of American anti-missile systems in the region.
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