The latest missile weapons become a means of blackmail
Today, we can state the active attempts of individual countries and military-political blocs, in particular the United States and NATO, to shift the global nuclear missile parity in their direction.
It is for this reason that the development of missile defense systems and the promotion of American missile defense positional areas is underway. That is why the United States, having begun the development of new highly effective types of weapons, primarily hypersonic missile weapons, is simply forcing China to fend off this threat.
CHINESE HYPERSOUND
The American Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has published a report "Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat" ("Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat").
As the name implies, the report addresses the issues of protection against modern and advanced hypersonic weapons. The authors determined the degree of various threats, and also suggested ways to counter and combat them.
The most interesting section in the CSIS report is section 4 "Exploiting New Failure Modes". It proposes and discusses several fundamentally new ways to combat hypersonic missiles or warheads.
At the same time, minimal attention is paid to traditional air defense and missile defense systems. However, considerable attention is paid to the development of research in the field of hypersound in China.
The CSIS study notes that since the creation of its own nuclear weapons, the Chinese political leadership has considered ballistic missiles as the most effective and reliable means of delivering them to the target. In nuclear planning, the main preference was given to missile forces, which are considered the main instrument of deterring aggression against the PRC.
The PLA Missile Forces is the new name of the Second Artillery Corps, which it received on December 31, 2015. At the same time, his status was raised. From a separate kind of PLA rocket men were transferred to an independent type of troops.
The results of the analysis of available information materials show that the Chinese political leadership is considering several conceptual approaches regarding the prospects for the use of hypersonic weapons systems, depending on their types and tactical and technical characteristics.
ICBMs WITH GUIDED WARHEADS
CSIS employees note that maneuvering and guided warheads (BG) in the accepted classification by flight speed are high-speed (up to 20 M) hypersonic weapons of destruction. At the same time, this type of aircraft has significantly limited controlled flight capabilities compared to other types of hypersonic aircraft (GZLA).
It should be particularly noted that Chinese developers have managed to create mobile high-precision ballistic missiles DF-21D and DF-26, which have no analogues in the world today, specially designed to destroy large surface ships, including aircraft carriers.
The DF-21D missiles have entered service with the PLA missile forces and are already deployed in combat positions. Their range of destruction of small-sized sea and land targets reaches 2000 km.
Even more effective missiles of this class, the DF-26, began to enter service. In the future, these missiles are supposed to be equipped with hypersonic warheads. With such equipment, the missile can overcome the American missile defense system and hit sea and coastal targets at a range of up to 4,000 km.
For the DF-21D, China is developing a separable warhead with individual guidance units. One missile can hit not one, but two or three ships or small-sized ground objects.
Along with various methods of improving ICBMs, the concept of a maneuvering warhead with aerodynamic quality (K≈1) was considered, which would allow the warhead to fly up to the target along a planning trajectory.
Another area of research is to give the ability to separate warheads to maneuver in the atmospheric part of the trajectory. Such a maneuver provides a deviation from the ballistic trajectory with a slight change in speed. The deviation value is calculated from the condition of increasing the probability of failure of target tracking by missile defense means.
A new direction that provides maneuverable properties of the BG when overcoming the missile defense in the atmospheric section of the trajectory is the creation of an aerodynamic control system of the BG. To do this, a special compartment is installed on the end part of the warhead, on which aerodynamic shields are located, deflected by an angle of up to 20 degrees.
According to foreign analysts, ICBMs with maneuvering and guided warheads are planned to be included in the ICBM group performing combat missions as part of the operation of strategic nuclear forces..
HYPERSONIC CRUISE MISSILES
It is reliably known that under the leadership of the General Directorate of Armaments of the PLA, several large R&D programs are being carried out by research institutions to develop GZKR and their elements. Due to the limited access to information in open sources, it is problematic to determine the most elaborated options for creating air–to–ground and ship-to-ground GZRS in the interests of the Chinese Air Force and Navy.
By analogy with the ongoing work carried out by research institutions of leading foreign countries, of particular interest is the analysis of the possible flight path of the GZKR, consisting of a number of consecutive sections: starting, marching and final.
At the launch site, after the launch of the GZKR from the carrier, the launch accelerator is accelerated to the number M = 3-3.5. After the separation of the launch accelerator, the GZKR is accelerated using an air jet engine to a cruising flight speed of M = 4-6 with simultaneous access to a cruising altitude of 30-32 km.
On the section of the marching flight, the GZKR can carry out maneuvers in a vertical plane with access to a dynamic ceiling. The maximum height of dynamic casting can be up to 70 km, and the maximum rate of climb – up to 500 m / s.
Chinese military experts do not exclude the possibility of using an advanced hypersonic vehicle as a combat UAV equipped with high-precision weapons. Presumably, the missile can be equipped with a combat unit in nuclear or conventional equipment. The combat unit of a hypersonic cruise missile (GZKR) can be a detachable guided combat unit or detachable subunits.
Thus, taking into account the borrowed theoretical and experimental groundwork, the military-political leadership of China considers GZKR primarily as high-precision means with which it is possible to quickly (10-15 minutes) hit various enemy targets located at a distance of up to 2000 km.
It is assumed that the strikes with these missiles will be carried out both on single and group particularly important stationary and mobile objects, including during the operation of the nuclear deterrent forces. At the same time, various sea carriers and strategic bombers can be carriers of hypersonic cruise missiles. And in the future – tactical aircraft and attack UAVs performing tasks in the second echelon of the Strategic Nuclear Forces operation or an independent operation of the Chinese army in the Indo-Pacific region.
6G FOR COMMUNICATION
The CSIS study notes: Chinese scientists have proven that hypersonic weapons can use 6G technology to communicate and detect targets. This breakthrough could lead to a decisive improvement in Chinese defense in near space.
Hypersonic weapons find it difficult to communicate with the outside world because hot ionized gas appears on its surface and blocks electromagnetic waves. Scientists at Tianjin University have developed a laser device that can generate a continuous beam of electromagnetic waves in the terahertz range – the frequency range between the microwave and infrared regions, which is also used for next-generation 6G communication technologies. The communications industry believes that the 6G smartphone will not only transmit data at a speed hundreds of times faster than today, but will also be able to track vital signs of life – such as gestures, breathing and glucose levels – due to its unprecedented sensitivity to terahertz waves.
This technology is being intensively studied for military applications, such as radar for detecting stealth aircraft or high-speed communication in space. China launched the world's first 6G satellite with terahertz technology in 2020 to conduct experiments on high-speed communication in space. On earth, Chinese scientists conducted experiments on 6G data transmission and reached speeds of several hundred gigabytes per second.
conclusions
1. Hypersonic weapons can seriously affect the established strategic balance in the world. It reduces the response time for the enemy, and high-precision, maneuvering hypersonic ballistic missile warheads can pass any missile defense systems.
2. At the current technological level, the creation of real samples of hypersonic weapons ceases to be a fantasy. This is especially true of hypersonic combat units-gliders for ICBMs.
3. Neither side has a decisive advantage in the hypersonic race. The United States is the most open about its projects. Russia and, to a greater extent, China are trying not to reveal their cards completely yet.
4. China has significantly intensified work on hypersonic. And this is due to the fact that American developments are also entering the full-scale testing phase.
5. In connection with the development of this type of weapon, the threshold of applicability of both nuclear and conventional weapons is lowered. The US military may be tempted by the lure of impunity, believing that they can now remove any regime they dislike within an hour. This means that the world is waiting for serious and extremely unpleasant revelations – in particular, in the field of interstate blackmail. Now, not in the line of nuclear weapons, but in the context of high-precision strikes from space with hypersonic weapons.
Vasily Ivanov
Vasily Ivanovich Ivanov is a journalist.
