The Chinese military has recently acquired a new delivery system that can be used with either conventional warheads or nuclear warheads. This has generated concern in the U.S. Military because apparently we have nothing that can counter it.
The Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center reported at a Congressional hearing that the Chinese have tested a hypersonic glide vehicle called the Falcon that “is basically a ballistic missile-launched system that gets acquires the target, gets the payload fast and high, pitches over, dives to hypersonic speed, and then basically just glides to the target.” The new delivery vehicle could be dangerous even without any warhead because of the kinetic energy it gains during the hypersonic dive.
When combined with medium-range ballistic missiles “hypersonic vehicles of any kind—whether they’re glide vehicles or cruise missiles—are extremely difficult to defend against because just the time is so compressed between initial detection, being able to get a track, being able to get a fire control solution." The incredible speed of the new delivery system makes it almost impossible destroy with current missile defense interceptors. The new delivery vehicle allows more efficient targeting, allows more targets to be hit with fewer missiles, allows more missiles to be employed per target and allows a bigger reserve of weapons to be maintained against contingency.
The first report of a test of the new delivery vehicle appeared in the Washington Free Beacon on January 9, 2014. The Washington Free Beacon is a conservative website connected to the Center for American Freedom. The Chinese military has said that the new delivery vehicle is intended attacks against aircraft carriers. The Admiral of the U.S. Pacific Command responded to the report by saying that he was not particularly concerned about the new delivery system and that it was just one among many factors that would be considered in a potential conflict between the U.S. and China. If the new Chinese system is as effective as feared, it could force U.S. ships to stay further away from the Chinese coast. The new Chinese system is just one of a number of different weapons systems that the Chinese are working on to counter anti-ballistic missile defense systems.
A member of the Congressional panel that received the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center report said that unless the U.S. military was able to develop directed energy weapons, there would be no way to counter the new Chinese system. Directed energy weapons can utilized a number of different types of electromagnetic energy such as radio frequencies, microwaves, lasers and masers to destroy an incoming warhead by igniting the ionized plasma sheath around the warhead, scrambling the electronics and targeting of a incoming warhead or just vaporizing the warhead. Another type of weapon called a pulsed rail gun could potentially be used against the Chinese system. A rail gun uses magnetic pulses to accelerate a projectile to high velocity.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the possibility of armed conflict between the U.S. and China. China has been issuing provocative statements about being able to target U.S. cities and it has been deliberately provoking hostile reactions among neighboring countries by claiming the right to control contested areas of ocean and contested islands. While the U.S. has to take rising Chinese military capability seriously, China has much to lose if it attacks the U.S. Chinese investment is so pervasive in the U.S. that they would be destroying their own property in addition to severely damaging a major trading partner. Even if we never retaliated against a major Chinese attack on the U.S. mainland, China would be devastated economically.
Artist's rendition of the Chinese Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle:
