escobar
Brigadier
US already tested something similar: vintage racer
China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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Very nice, BUT.
The same article goes on to say -
Pentagon officials have been increasingly public with their concerns about the July test. The hypersonic glide vehicle was propelled into space on an “orbital bombardment system” rocket that can fly over the South Pole, putting the weapon out of reach of US missile defence systems, which are focused on ballistic missile threats coming over the North Pole. The orbital bombardment system gives China more ways to hit US targets.
Moscow deployed a system called “fractional orbital bombardment system” during the cold war, but it was less advanced and did not carry a manoeuvrable hypersonic glide vehicle.
US officials are well aware that China is ahead of the Pentagon in hypersonic weapons. But the July 27 test showed that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force was making even faster progress than many had projected. That has been reinforced by Beijing successfully combining an orbital system with a hypersonic weapon that can shoot a missile.
So it is a FOBS + Hypersonic Vehicle + seperate Missile launch capability.
What more, the Hypersonic vehicle made complex maneuvering over significant ranges (But missed its target by 30 km).
Hope I don't sound fanboish here. But the article paints a far more complex system than Vintage racer project mentioned in that briefing transcript.
Reaching big speculation territory here as we don't know details of either the Vintage racer or the Chinese FOB hypersonic test
escobar
Brigadier
The FT article IS technically very poor with lot of hype. Anyway vintage racer IS Just a UAV
Indeed FT isn't exactly a military oriented piece. But other military enthusiast website has quoted FT ( with reservations). FT is the first to report it. The details carried in the FT article is " distinctly different" and the technology it mentions are unique enough to warrant attention. It's not often you come across an FOBs/ Hypersonic test allegation. Its different from a spying allegation or scandal expose.
Steve Trimble just corrected himself. He enthusiastically reached out to Vintage racer as a competing US development. Maybe i sense a bit of discomfort there? Very telling as many people can't grasp the idea of a Chinese system pioneering a field.
Anyway, now that Vintage racer is proved to be not a hypersonic system in the same league, US seem (at least publicly) behind China even farther than thought.
Read more on Vintage racer here:
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A slow ass one from the look of it
They are saying that it took place in the atmosphere
Honestly, this whole thing is a mess. The article is garbage-level in terms of explaining clearly what happened
Yes. It indeed took place in the atmosphere. The Hypersonic flight and the speculated release of missile happened in the atmosphere. The entire system was launched by a Long March rocket, right?
I checked the updated article. Other than the whole complexity of the test conducted, I don't see any hiccups in the whole write up. The test, if true, means China has spent significant resources on this. It's quite something.
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From the drive warzone ( good regarding US technological developments):
"Hypersonic Ingress" indicates the Vintage Racer loitering munition has the ability to get its target at hypersonic speeds, defined as above Mach 5. It's not clear how the munition gets to the target area at these speeds, but seems most plausible based on the information publicly available now. An could be another option, but this seems less likely given the high cost and complexity associated with those types of weapons and their current developmental state. It's also not clear from the Pentagon budget documents if the Office of the Secretary of Defense conducted a full flight test of the complete system or just the loitering munition component.
Vintage racer can be described as an intelligent loitering warhead that can be carried by Ballistic or Cruise missiles.
escobar
Brigadier
Garbage article but it is interesting to notice that U.S. ability to track gliders is not as limited as the Pentagon claims.
They probably have more info but don’t want to reveal how much they actually know about this test or how they know what they know about what happened
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