Wall Street Journal: China has tested a hypersonic missile capable of launching a projectile into the air
China this summer tested a hypersonic missile capable of launching a projectile into the air, a technology that neither the United States nor Russia currently possesses, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Confirming information published by the Financial Times newspaper on Sunday, the US daily reported that China conducted a test in July that included “a complex maneuver during which a projectile was launched from a hypersonic missile while it was in the air”.
The Wall Street Journal added, quoting unidentified US officials, that this step shows that China’s capabilities are greater than what is known so far.
The Financial Times reported that “experts at DARPA, the Pentagon’s research agency, don’t know how China was able to launch a projectile from a vehicle flying at hypersonic speed,” more than five times the speed of sound.
These experts are also unaware of the nature of the projectile that fell into the sea, according to what the British newspaper quoted people with access to information from the intelligence services.
Some experts believe that the projectile is an air-to-air missile, while others believe that its function is camouflage to protect the hypersonic missile in the event of a threat.
The Financial Times reported in October that Beijing launched a hypersonic missile in August that flew into Earth orbit before descending toward its target, which it missed by a few kilometers.
Beijing denied at the time that it was a missile test, and said it had tested a reusable spacecraft.
But the Chief of Staff of the US Army, General Mark Milley, spoke a few days later of a “very important test of a hypersonic weapon system”, without specifying the date of the test.
He likened it to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in October 1957, which surprised the United States and represented the starting point for the race to conquer space.
