Henri K article on the stealth missile
China is developing a new stealth cruise missile?
BY
China is in the process of developing a new stealth cruise missile, at least that is what an article published in March on the site of CASIC Haiying Electromechanical Technology Academy, one of the main missile manufacturers of the country .
According to the text - which seems to have been removed recently by the Chinese manufacturer - new composite "sandwich" composite materials, created by an engineer called GONG Yuan Xun (宫 元勋) and his team, are used "very largely "in a certain project that has a high requirement in stealth, and that takes into consideration the" structural stealth "from the beginning of the design, in other words the geometrical / passive stealth.
The team had major difficulties in reconciling the mass, the thickness (of the hull?) And the need for broadband absorption. The obstacles that were eventually overcome in collaboration with the subcontracting factories to improve the training processes, and with the own laboratories of CASIC Institute No. 306.
The article also talks about two other competing institutions in another project for a stealth component, but no link can be established between the two projects mentioned here.
Excerpt from one of the research documents co-authored by GONG Yuan Xun
Knowing that CASIC Haiying Electromechanical Technology Academy, formerly called CASIC 3rd Academy, is responsible for the development of most Chinese cruise and anti-ship missile, such as the DF-10, the KD-20 or the famous YJ-83 for example it is therefore safe to say that this "certain project" in question is in fact a stealth missile, except that we do not know whether it is a cruise missile or an anti-ship missile, although technically the border is thin between the two.
The new family of naval missiles YJ-18 is available in several versions for example, namely first the anti-ship version launched by a submarine, then the Mer-Mer version, the underwater version at launch. vertical, and finally the typing version on the ground.
It could be, in theory, a furtive version developed on the basis of YJ-18, but it remains a work guess.
The anti-ship missile YJ-18A, developed by CASIC 3rd and launched by a destroyer Type 052D
And this is not the first time that we hear about the work on stealth conducted by the 3rd Academy CASIC. Indeed, another article published on December 15, 2015 on the Weixin account of the same institution mentions already a campaign of measurement of stealth around a "certain project", tests that took place "in autumn" in the middle of the desert Gobi, and this is the first time that the organization has had to participate in an evaluation against several competitors.
A more in-depth research on one of the personnel cited in the article, HAO Hao (郝 璐), shows that the work carried out since 2013 by the latter focuses mainly on absorbent materials applying to tactical missiles.
One of the patents filed by this researcher is a "stealth" tank of a cruise missile, as an example.
Excerpt from a patent filed by a team including HAO Hao, showing the "stealth" tank of a missile
Our follow-up around composite materials in China also allowed to link a company specialized in the field with the "stealth" project (s) of CASIC 3e. The company based in Jiangsu Province,
, has been a major player in fiber optics since 2007, and is capable of producing T1000 grade fibers that Japanese and Western companies have had the monopoly of so far.
There is no public evidence that Hengshen actually participated in the CASIC projects, but Zhenjiang City, where Haiying Electromechanical Technology Academy is located, and Hengshen also considered these two companies to be on the same industrial chain in
.
And in a TV report CCTV dated September 16, 2017, the subject of which is the civil-military integration, we can see the composite cell of what Hengshen engineers confirmed as being that of a missile, without revealing however, none of its details.
