And to think they're publicizing that they intend for a final cost of $50 million per unit. If it ends up anything like all of their other weapons programs, it should easily overshoot it by 4x. It makes me jealous of the guys whose bonuses depend on arms sales to USG.
Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)
- Thread starter A.Man
- Start date
LRHW range is stated as 2500-3000km not sure where you are getting the higher number. Also it is larger than df-17.
They can state whatever they want. Yet this isn't the first attempt where the LRHW has been tested to ranges above 3000 kilometers.
Here's one from October 2023:
Not sure where you get the idea that the LRHW is larger than the DF-17.
One LRHW TEL is able to carry two LRHW missiles each, whereas one DF-17 TEL is only able to carry one DF-17 missile each. This observation alone should be enough to to distinguish the rough sizes of these two hypersonic missiles.
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It always looked pretty clear to me that a single DF-17 glide vehicle + booster is a lot larger than a C-HGV + LRHW booster. I doubt you could even fit the former into the latter's launch tube/canister/whatever. It's public information that China is literally on the cutting edge of propellant chemistry and now at least on par in materials science, so there's no way the C-HGV + LRHW would outperform the DF-17 in range. Especially given the DF-17 can properly glide and the C-HGV is more like a DF21D (just a ballistic missile with some pretty minor added functionality in evasion/target seeking).
I would also like to point out to everyone wondering about "comparative range" that payload weight matters as well.
Which is to say, we don't really have any details for what mass the payload of the various weapons being listed are, so trying to compare "like for like" (even accounting for different RV geometries, flight trajectories, different booster propellant and grain types etc) isn't super useful.
Thanks for pointing out a super huge blindspot. I assumed it would not carry a high explosive payload and rely entirely on kinetic energy given how much of it there would be at hypersonic terminal velocities, but I definitely am just guessing about that with no evidence either way.
So we just wait and see. Either way, you should never take their claims about performance at face value. They are trying to sell a product and will lie, cheat, and steal as much as is necessary to achieve maximum profits. USG certainly is in no position to hold the MIC's feet to the fire given a lot of government decision-makers are counting on the revolving door to remain open to them.
And what are their dimensions?
And? Is the missile inside the test stand going to be massively different to the missile in an operational launcher?
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