Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)

nativechicken said:

What I'm referring to happened more than 20 years ago. At that time, military magazines and publications in mainland China openly acknowledged that China's exported rockets were only equipped with simple inertial guidance, and that the low-cost tactical inertial guidance used in China's exported ballistic missiles had relatively large drift, resulting in a theoretical CEP of 1/1000. Therefore, the accuracy of ballistic missile inertial guidance was described as 1/1000 of the 300 km range, which is 300 meters. As for tactical long-range rockets, in order to achieve lower costs, the simple guidance they used was naturally considered to have only 1/100 accuracy (according to the Taiwanese perspective). This is the origin of their belief that tactical long-range rockets had a CEP on the kilometer scale, while tactical ballistic missiles had a theoretical CEP of 300 meters.

Back then, people in Taiwan did not believe China had the capability for GPS-guided systems (during the 1996 Taiwan Strait exercises, the U.S. shut down regional GPS guidance, causing missile test failures). They also did not believe China could develop low-cost fiber optic gyroscopes or integrated strapdown guidance technologies combining multiple navigation methods. Furthermore, they did not believe China could produce a terminal maneuver system for ballistic missiles similar to the Pershing II (in reality, China likely completed testing of a system similar to the Pershing II around 1998, achieving a CEP accuracy of less than 10 meters). Hence, they consistently refused to acknowledge these capabilities.

Click to expand...