China is among three nations that are developing hypersonic weapons, along with Russia and the US. It is also building and deploying sophisticated surveillance satellites, aiming to deploy 138 satellites in space by 2030, that would be used for supporting the precision global strike weapons.

On November 23, 2015, China conducted the sixth flight test of its new high-speed nuclear attack vehicle (DF-ZF) capable of global strikes and obviously designed to defeat US missile defences. The DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle was launched atop a ballistic missile fired from the Wuzhai missile test centre in central China’s Shanxi province. The vehicle separated from its launcher near the edge of the atmosphere and then glided to an impact range several thousand kilometres away in western China, flying at speeds beyond Mach 5. The DF-ZF is believed to reach speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10 per hour.

DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle

Current US missile defences are designed to counter non-manoeuvring warheads with more easily-tracked ballistic trajectories. China also could use the DF-ZF for conventional-armed rapid global strike capability; equivalent to America’s Prompt Global Strike. The US considers hypersonic glide vehicles as new strategic warfare technology and an emerging threat. The fact that the DF-ZF offers both conventional and nuclear options, can keep the adversary guessing when China would use the nuclear, making it even more complicated. The annual report of America’s congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released last November stated that China’s hypersonic weapons are in the developmental stages and are “progressing rapidly.” The glide vehicle could be deployed by 2020, and a separate high-technology ramjet-propelled cruise missile could be deployed by 2025.

China is among three nations that are developing hypersonic weapons, along with Russia and the US. China also is building and deploying sophisticated surveillance satellites, aiming to deploy 138 satellites in space by 2030, that would be used for supporting the precision global strike weapons. Despite multiple US-China institutionalised bilateral dialogues, China has refused to negotiate limits on its strategic weapons and remains highly secretive about all its weapon programmes. More significantly, less than a fortnight of the sixth flight test of the DF-ZF, China conducted the launcher test of a new rail-mobile version of its latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the DF-41 (CSS-X-20), on December 5, 2015.

The test involved a ‘cold launch’ of a DF-41 from a canister with a gas charge without the engine of the missile being ignited. In a full test, the missile’s engine would ignite microseconds after exiting the launch tube. A day earlier on December 4, a DF-41 was flight-tested at the Wuzhai missile test centre. The Chinese rail-mobile ICBM system is reportedly modelled on the Ukrainian-designed RT-23 (SS-24 ‘Scalpel’) rail-mobile solid-fuel ICBM. The test was to establish the tube launch system’s compatibility with China’s new rail car. The RT-23 first deployed by Russia in 1987 uses an ejection tube to boost the missile from the train car shortly before ignition of its engine. The United States estimates the DF-41 can carry up to ten 150-300 kiloton yield thermonuclear warheads per missile capable of targeting entire US. It is solid fuelled, road mobile and has an estimated range of between 12,000 and 15,000 km.

But Chinese missiles aboard trains will be particularly difficult to track. According to Phillip Karber, US defence analyst, “The combination of high-speed mobility, launch cars disguised as civilian passenger trains, tunnel protection and secure reloading of missiles, coupled with multiple warheads, makes the system extremely hard to regulate or verify the number of systems.”

China has already built 2,000 km of heavy gauge rail for this system and is likely to have more than 2,73,500 km of such train tracks by 2050. The missile will likely be deployed sometime between 2018 and 2020 and is likely to be armed with China’s deadliest DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). China has the world’s longest high-speed rail network, which is being expanded to other Eurasian countries. China’s rail links coming to Nepal, Myanmar and most significantly, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) all the way to Gwadar and the Persian Gulf need to be taken note of. If the biggest missile can be rail-mobile, so can any other Chinese missiles. And China has more short-range to intermediate-range missiles than the rest of the world combined. China’s artilleries, anti-air missiles, tanks, mechanised infantries can also be rail-mobile. Not only is China preparing to speedily transport her forces through high speed rail but her deployment of all types of missiles on rails readies China for conflict in the Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific and aims at enlarging the threat in being for India.