On this episode of China Uncensored,
welcome to the arm show.
Welcome back to China Uncensored,
I’m Chris Chappell.
the US and China are in an arms race.
A hypersonic missile arms race.
Oh, and Russia is involved too.
And China is winning.
An anonymous US government source
told the Diplomat that in November,
China conducted two tests
of a hypersonic glide vehicle,
or HGV.
That makes it, “the first HGV test in the world
using a system intended to be fielded operationally.”
It’s called the Dong Feng, or Eastern Wind, 17.
And it’s estimated to be ready to deploy by 2020.
The DF-17 is the first missile system
that uses a hypersonic glide vehicle.
The United States and Russia
have both conducted developmental tests, too—
but neither country is known to have taken
concrete steps towards deploying these systems.
So how fast is the DF-17?
Well, in a China test flight on November 1,
it flew 870 miles in 11 minutes.
That would be like going from New York
to St. Louis in 11 minutes.
Although why anyone would be in
such a hurry to get to St. Louis is beyond me.
But anyway,
the missile they tested traveled at Mach 6—
or 6 times the speed of sound.
And three times the speed of the Mach 3 razor.
Oh, and by the way,
this kind of missile can theoretically be designed
to carry a nuclear bomb.
That’s a big concern for US defense officials.
Doug Wise of the Defense Intelligence Agency points out that while the US has focused
its military attention on the Middle East,
ISIS probably won’t be able to
actually destroy America.
“You want to talk about an existential threat?
How about China’s hypersonic glide missile,
which can travel at
multiple times the speed of sound
and could take out an aircraft carrier
before you could even blink?
If the entire Pacific Fleet was at
the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,
that would pose an existential threat.”
Hypersonic missiles work differently
than conventional ballistic ones.
These don’t enter space.
Instead, they fly low at high speeds,
allowing them to hide from traditional radar scans.
There’s a lot more complicated to design, though,
because aerodynamics are different
at ultra-high speeds.
And it seems China may
surpass the United States
in hypersonic missile testing facilities.
According to the South China Morning Post,
“China is building the world’s fastest wind tunnel
to simulate hypersonic flight at speeds
of up to 7 and half miles per second”—
or Mach 35.
Which is the kind of razor that I use.
It’s very manly.
Just to give you an idea,
Mach 35 is nearly six times faster
than the hypersonic missile China built
and tested in November.
But it gives you a really close shave.
A missile traveling at Mach 35
could reach the west coast of the United States
from China in less than 14 minutes.
Don’t worry; this one’s still just
a prototype in a wind tunnel.
But here’s how it gets to Mach 35:
It explodes tubes of oxygen, hydrogen,
and nitrogen gases.
That not only produces incredible speed,
but also incredible heat.
Prototype vehicles placed in the new wind tunnel
reach temperatures, “nearly 50 percent hotter
than the surface of the sun.”
After China, the second-fasted wind tunnel
is in the US.
It’s called the LENS-X.
But it can only simulate speeds
up to Mach 28—
compared to China’s Mach 35.
It’s like Chinese engineers
are just mocking us.
China’s state-run CCTV recently released
this footage of their current wind tunnel
and hypersonic glider,
the JF-12 Hyper Dragon.
Yes, Hyper Dragon.
Coming soon to Nintendo Switch.
You’ll need really fast reflexes.
Of course the main fear is not so much
that the Chinese Communist Party
will nuke the United States.
It’s that if China is the first to successfully develop
these super-hypersonic missiles,
it will change the balance of power
in the Asia Pacific region.
Because of their incredible speed
and lower flight path,
hypersonic missiles could get through
US missile defense systems in Asia—
like THAAD in South Korea.
“Once the THAAD radars fail to
function in the first stage,
it could reduce the window
to raise the alarm
about the PLA’s intercontinental ballistic missiles
leaving the U.S. without enough time to intercept.”
But don’t worry,
there would still be plenty of time
for the State of Hawaii to issue an alert...
that everyone ignores this time.
Fortunately, US weapons maker Lockheed Martin
is already talking about an update to THAAD
to handle hypersonic missiles.
The bigger concern is the proliferation
of hypersonic weapons in the 21st century.
The Rand Corporation,
not be confused with Rand Enterprises
from everyone’s least favorite Netflix Marvel show,
Iron Fist,
warns it could lead to countries
adopting a “launch on warning” defense policy.
That’s when a counter strike is launched
before incoming missiles reach their targets.
Next month, the Trump Administration
will release a new Nuclear Posture Review.
Will the administration tackle the issue
of hypersonic proliferation?
What do you think?
Leave your comments below.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again I’m your host Chris Chappell.
See you next time.
Hypersonic missiles sure move fast.
But don’t worry,
you still have plenty of time
to get to your underground bunker
and switch on your favorite episodes
of China Uncensored.
You can even watch the full half-hour versions
on our website, ChinaUncensored.tv.
How else would you want to spend your time
before the missiles hit?