In July, the Chinese military launched a rocket from a hypersonic glider over the South China Sea. According to the Financial Times, citing sources, no country in the world has demonstrated such technology yet.
A hypersonic glider is an unmanned vehicle that rises and accelerates to hypersonic speed by a launch vehicle, and then undocks and glides to the target. China, like a number of other countries, is actively developing this technology.
In October, Financial Times sources reported that the Chinese military conducted tests of hypersonic weapons on July 27 and August 13. In July, they launched a rocket, which together with the glider flew around the Earth in low Earth orbit, after which the glider landed about 32 kilometers from the target. The newspaper did not provide details about the tests on August 13. Beijing says it has actually been testing reusable spacecraft technology.
Sources told the Financial Times in November that during tests on July 27, the Chinese military managed to launch a rocket from a hypersonic glider. This happened when the device had already returned to the Earth's atmosphere. Experts at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Development Agency (DARPA) are not sure how China was able to do this, given that the glider was flying at hypersonic speed.
What kind of rocket it was also raises questions. Some experts at the Pentagon believe that the air-to-air class. Others claim that we are talking about a means of electronic countermeasures, which should disable air defense systems so that they cannot shoot down the airframe.
The US military is also developing a missile system with hypersonic gliders. Earlier we wrote that they conducted static fire tests of its solid-fuel engine. This engine can be turned off before all the fuel burns out, which will allow the missiles to reach any targets in an average radius.
Vasilisa Chernyavtseva
