Imagery Update: a Tour of One of China's Missile Impact Testing Ranges
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I jest mildly, but this is why we take stephen chen somewhat seriously but not literally when PRC adds 40m STEM in 10 years and there's surplus neurons to explain obvious shit. I remember 3 years ago he posted customary "exaggerated" SCMP article that got dismissed on reddit because Stephen Chen:
- "Chinese scientists work on hypersonic missile that can hit moving car"
- "‘Important progress’ has been made towards 2025 deadline to come up with solutions to the missile technology’s challenges"
Hey it's 2025! Also note:
- The hypersonic heat-seeker would also be able to go after a target in the air
- demonstrated a technology that would allow a hypersonic ground-to-air missile to hit a target as small as a commercial drone
Queue E7 wedgetail getting canned citing survivability, granted because spacex makes megaconstellation ISR much better proposition.
Regardless, there aren't going to be tracks in the sky to serve as proxy indicator for hypersonic anti air like hypersonic -> moving ground target, but shooting down AWACs and tankers with hypersonics always seemed pretty obvious.
Note this was posted in May 2022, and AFAIK Aug 2022 was first time we had verificatin from Fannel, former director of intelligence for Pacific Fleet "confirm" PRC's 2020 df26+d21 tests "by all accounts" hit a moving target at sea. So in 2020 PLA likely can hit moving ships. In retrospect it makes sense to be actively exploring hitting smaller moving vehicles by 2022... and who knows timeline for hitting air, but my guess is sooner than later.
Also if PRC missiles designed to hit moving vehicles, it obviously goes to say it can be used to assassinate individuals. Like not as collateral free as a samurai hellfire r9x, but the notion DF26 launched from PRC that can potentially cancel anyone up to 2IC, all of middle east, most of east europe, 20 minutes after launch is pretty... interesting.
