China’s hypersonic weapons can travel at extreme speeds of up to Mach 20, strike global targets within half an hour and even be launched from space, according to a new study.
Researchers from the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) summarised the capabilities and vulnerabilities of China’s re-entry glide missiles, revealing they can travel up to 21,000km/h (13,000 miles per hour) in high altitudes within the atmosphere.
Certain variants may even be launched from space-based platforms, making them “capable of drastically compressing the adversary’s early-warning system response time and operational scope, thereby enhancing the probability of successful penetration”, researchers wrote.
The analysis, published last month in the Chinese academic journal Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, likely disclosed some details for the first time and corroborated earlier reports from the US that critics dismissed as hype.
In 2021, The Financial Times cited US military intelligence claiming China tested two hypersonic weapons released from near-Earth orbit, but some military experts called the orbital bombardment tech “science fiction”.
During a November interview, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth warned that Chinese hypersonic missiles “can take out 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of the conflict”.
