Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)

tphuang said:

it's kind of nuts to me they stopped production of a mach 4 cruise missile with 4000 km range. DF-26 is clearly more capable if they made this decision

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To be honest, a mach 4 cruise missile with that kind of range will be flying at a rather high altitude until the final terminal phase.

As an air breathing missile, even if it's at that speed, flying at a high altitude will make it a rather obvious and relatively easy target.

All this just goes to show how specifically geared to preparing for war with the US the PLA is focused on. Such a weapon absolutely is useful against just about every other potential opposition force that isn't the US ie has the US military capability, numbers and industrial might in replenishing supplies and fighting an attrition war.

DF-100 even if it can be intercepted, cannot be done so easily and certainly not perfectly. I mean even Israeli interceptors (best the western world has) can barely deal with Hez and Hamas rockets. A DF-100 is basically a lightsabre in tech gap compared to a garage build rocket.

Which goes to show that China treats its top end missile forces aimed at US carriers and regional bases as missiles that need to achieve high hit rates. If they have indeed stopped production (for reasons outside of performance however decent we assume it could be), it shows they consider this weapons something the US would have a great ability to intercept, making it worthless to pursue in place of simply building more DF-21, DF-26, and various HGVs. PLA isn't even interested in stockpiling more DF-100 missiles against potential adversaries with little to no hope of stopping the missile in useful interception rates.

Russia has sort of shown that it's air defences are actually fairly solid (since air defence was never even close to foolproof) wherever they actually did apply their modern air defences. Same goes for western examples - US missiles used by Saudis, Israeli and US missiles in Israel and on fleets, NATO missiles in Ukraine. Spotty performance at best but every Houthi missile that would have landed at US fleets were intercepted. Clearly the Americans when operating their own interceptors are quite capable, at least when it comes to defeating Houthi rockets.

So there could be good reason for China to insist on the best - either mach 10+ MRBM/IRBM anti-ship missiles with ballistic or aeroballistic flights or HGVs. Both forms that fly high up at least fly much faster than the DF-100 or can pull turns at faster speeds than the DF-100 cruises.

Several points to add:

#1 - It should be stressed that the exhibition board at Zhuhai did not mention that the DF-100 has a cruise speed of Mach 4, only that the DF-100 is able to reach speeds of Mach 4 (速度高达4马赫). So it is probable that the DF-100 has a lower average cruise speed, and that Mach 4 is achieved during its boost and/or terminal flight stage.

#2 - DF-100 entered service with the PLARF too little, too late. While having large similar starting points in time as the other hypersonic-speed missiles, the DF-100 project has suffered terribly from lengthy delays in its development. @万年炎帝 also stated at the same time as the DF-100 basically completing its acceptance trials, 祝学军院士's DF-17 and 朱广生院士's DF-26A are already in serial/mass-production and deployment stages - Something which Ayi agrees.

#3 - One arguably more important factor in the PLARF's decision to induct only small numbers of DF-100 lies with the changing nature of anti-ship/land-attack missions of today and going forward.

DF-100's presence back in the 1990s, 2000s or even early-2010s would've been monumental. However, with the advent of high/very-high-altitude hypersonic missiles on one end and low-altitude, subsonic VLO missiles on the other end - Supersonic high-altitude cruise missiles like the DF-100 increasingly becomes an oddity.

Given that DF-100 travels in supersonic speeds throughout pretty much all of its journey, the missile must stay at high altitudes to reduce drag in order to retain its huge strike ranges. Yet, such missiles cannot travel too high either, given that it is air-breathing (meaning thinner atmosphere). The speed at which the missile travels at also means a rather large IR signature (due to greater amount of air friction), which diminishes the purpose and effort at making such designs (V)LO-shaped.

Many of the anti-air missile systems today (HQ-9B, SM-6, PAC-3 MSE etc) are already capable of travelling as fast as, if not faster than the many of the supersonic missiles of today, while also getting able to intercept missiles at higher altitudes. DF-100's induction today means it's pretty much stuck in an environment that isn't exactly the friendliest to it, especially when compared to either of the two ends of the spectrum.

(The same negatives apply with the likes of YJ-12, although YJ-12 got lucky that it was inducted into active service much earlier than the DF-100.)

Therefore, it is understandable (if not natural) for the PLA to relegate the DF-100 for second-line strike duties, given the much superior strike options that are already widely available at the PLA's disposal today and into the future.

TL; DR - We have two options going forward:


Honestly, I'd prefer taking both.

Honestly, I think its highly beneficial for the PLA to invest heavily in the second type, something like the LRASM. Easy to produce in vast quantities, Something which fits in the current VLS systems and can essentially replace all traditional anti-ship missiles. Low obserable, Low IR and electronic signature is genuinely underrated compared to hypersonics IMO. The mass production of these missiles is well suited to the kind of conflict that will occur and the manufacturing capabilities of China. They've proven to be very effective in the Ukraine war.

ACuriousPLAFan said:

TL; DR - We have two options going forward:

#	Characteristics	Advantages
One	- Flies extremely fast (hypersonic / high-hypersonic) - Flies at very high altitudes, if not at extremely high (near space) altitudes	- Massively compresses enemy reaction time by virtue of extreme speeds - Very challenging to predicting missile trajectory, i.e. complicating enemy interception efforts - Only few types of missiles available to the enemy that are suited for interception efforts - Able to cover massive distances using only very short periods of time etc.
Two	- Flies slow and steady (subsonic) - Flies at high altitudes (cruising stage) and at low (altitudes (terminal stage) - (V/U)LO-shaped design	- Compresses enemy reaction time by reducing enemy's effective detection distances - Can be paired with ECM/decoy munitions (e.g. ADM-160C) to degrade enemy defenses - Available in cheaper price tags and in larger numbers - Available to larger number of launch platforms (land, air, surface, underwater) etc.

Honestly, I'd prefer taking both.

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They're using both, I'd guess a strike might look like this: using a few hypersonic/old BM/rockets to guide out enemy air defenses, followed by waves of AKF-98, decoys and long endurance recon drones. Once the slow stealth missiles are close to their targets, a proper hypersonic high end missile salvo is used to confirm sure kills on enemy radars and air defenses along with targets of opportunity revealed by the 2nd wave.

Anyone have any info on how prolific VLO cruise missiles like the AKF-98 are currently? I hope it's not just export only..

polati said:

Anyone have any info on how prolific VLO cruise missiles like the AKF-98 are currently? I hope it's not just export only..

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It's just afaik impossible to know how exactly prolific, because they don't publish reports on stockpiles. Also PLA use many slightly different munitions with just very subtle differences between them, so there's a chance the common AtG missiles aren't even called AKF-98 but something else (or AKF-98 is only one of a few subtly different models, which was the only one that happened to be labelled in public).

Blitzo said:

To be honest, a mach 4 cruise missile with that kind of range will be flying at a rather high altitude until the final terminal phase.

As an air breathing missile, even if it's at that speed, flying at a high altitude will make it a rather obvious and relatively easy target.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

#	Characteristics	Advantages
One	- Flies extremely fast (hypersonic / high-hypersonic) - Flies at very high altitudes, if not at extremely high (near space) altitudes	- Massively compresses enemy reaction time by virtue of extreme speeds - Very challenging to predicting missile trajectory, i.e. complicating enemy interception efforts - Only few types of missiles available to the enemy that are suited for interception efforts - Able to cover massive distances using only very short periods of time etc.

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Aegis is quite strong against high supersonic threats that come in sharply during the terminal dive. It's taken very seriously by PLA (if you read the 军事战略学/Science of Military Strategy publications) that defeating terminal BMD is a priority in their missile designs, among other futureproofing requirements.
Future HCMs will fly flat trajectories (<30km) to avoid OTH radars for as long as possible and begin a shallow angle dive a few hundred kilometers downrange to avoid terminal intercepts. These concepts are well understood by everyone pursuing HCMs, it's just an immensely difficult material science problem, maintaining hypersonic flight at such low altitude while keeping aim.

I don't know where exactly to put this, but since it's tangentially related to DF-17, I'll put it here.

Images from the show booth of Wuxi Elite Linear Motion Machinery Corporation at Zhuhai Airshow. The company is apparently the provider of hydraulic telescoping cylinders for missile TEL vehicles, including that of the DF-17 TEL, which you can see on display at the booth.