PLA Anti-Air Missile (SAM) systems

Index said:

Only info I can find says HQ-19 is purely exoatmospheric midcourse, and that it's made to fit the HQ-9 battery family. If it's in HQ-9 family, it should have similarly a large warhead and sophisticated active + passive guidence systems with anti decoy functions, which brings it in alignment with an incoming projectile and then detonates the warhead to deflect it. Not hit to kill.

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We have footage of the HQ-19 launching. It is long and thin, similar to THAAD. If the missile is supposed to be midcourse, and also haul around a 150 kg warhead, it'd likely need to be significantly bigger.

Index said:

DN-3 seems to be almost analogous to US' GBI. It's more for anti ICBM and is possibly not road mobile, or certainly at least not shoot and scoot like HQ-9.

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Wasn't DN-3 just a test vehicle? And a very old one at that.

totenchan said:

We have footage of the HQ-19 launching. It is long and thin, similar to THAAD. If the missile is supposed to be midcourse, and also haul around a 150 kg warhead, it'd likely need to be significantly bigger.

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Yeah I think it's hard to tell without seeing the launcher vehicle, which to my knowledge we've never seen. And you are right, just because it is Hq-9 battery family doesn't mean the missile have to be similar to the Hq-9 standard AAM.

Some CGIs depict it as fitted in dual launchers on the HQ-9 vehicle, but I don't think they're reliable.

All the public exercises HQ-19 have conducted have, afaik, been exoatmospheric. It might have a terminal capable component, but I think it's very reductionist to compare it to THAAD which basically only works in terminal phase.

totenchan said:

Wasn't DN-3 just a test vehicle? And a very old one at that.

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It's based on DF21 boost stage, while HQ-19 is something else. So imho at least they should be 2 different platforms with different roles, not DN3 being the prototype and HQ-19 being in use.

Index said:

Some CGIs depict it as fitted in dual launchers on the HQ-9 vehicle, but I don't think they're reliable.

All the public exercises HQ-19 have conducted have, afaik, been exoatmospheric. It might have a terminal capable component, but I think it's very reductionist to compare it to THAAD which basically only works in terminal phase.

It's based on DF21 boost stage, while HQ-19 is something else. So imho at least they should be 2 different platforms with different roles, not DN3 being the prototype and HQ-19 being in use.

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Just digging up some old research on this system I've been following for some time now (the website eastpendulum.com is down unfortunately it covered a lot of this).



NOTAM from 2014 test, likely an early version of this system. The target missile is launched fired from Jiuquan, the green zone represents the possible area covered by the trajectory of the ballistic missile. The HQ-19 interceptor is launched near Korla, top left of the image, which intercepted the target missile in the blue area. These trajectories therefore perfectly justify the closure of civil air corridors ( red line ). The other 2 yellow areas at the bottom right represent the interceptor drop zone. Of particular interest is from the interceptor launch site to the drop zones, there is about 1700km distance, this translates into a minimum post-boost speed of the interceptor at 3.0-3.3km/s (Mach 9.7). Characteristics are indeed quite similar to THAAD.

2017 test, NOTAM was very similar to the 2014. Interceptor launched from near Korla towards Qinghai province, to intercept the target launched from Jiuquan. Delta-v for this is at least 3km/s.



a dutch pilot flying from Hong Kong to Baku, Azerbaijan actually managed to take this amazing photo from his cockpit:



These two tests were just referred to as 'ABM test' by the Chinese defense ministry without specifically mentioning the term 'midcourse' compared to the DN-2/3, which I believe is a technology demonstrator for an interceptor with a closing speed of 7km/s+, like GBI.

My view is HQ-19 is designed to intercept IRBMs like Agni-IV for example, out of the atmosphere as well as at the top endo-atmospheric (requires TVC for this), but not much more, which is pragmatic for the Chinese ABM program to defend against real theater based threats.

HQ-19 indeed is an exoatmospheric based on what we've been shown but that should not preclude it from performing terminal interception. Comparing the ASAT/ mid course capable DN-2/3 series with HQ-19 shows HQ-19 is potentially shorter legged and with more limited energy reserves, is better suited to performing ABM against IRBMs and ballistic missiles with lower energy than IRBMs.

With China now proliferating HGVs armed on missiles up to IRBM ranged (DF-27), the entire approach to BMD needs to adapt. Hit to kill or fragmentation cone with large warheads will both fail to intercept HGVs. Since China uses hit to kill with mid course and ASAT interception, PLA's preference for large warheads even down to the HQ-16 level is telling. This new HQ-9 variant (8 missiles per launcher instead of 4) could just be a way to optimise and have both lines running. The classic HQ-9B may be considered too wasteful for lower tier/cost targets.

FK-1000 air defense system appears to have an upgraded chassis. The 3rd image below shows the old chassis.