China’s successful new rocket launch signals breakthroughs in nation’s space weaponry: military experts

A Long March 7 rocket, China’s new model carrier rocket, blasts off in Hainan province on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

It was just one launch, but the successful maiden flight of a new-generation carrier rocket on Saturday pointed to a multitude of breakthroughs in Chinese space weaponry, according to military experts.

The Long March-7 lifted off from Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre in the mainland’s southern-most Hainan province, carrying 13.5 tonnes of cargo – 90 per cent of which was taken up by the rocket’s special non-toxic fuel designed for multiple launch vehicles, plus wind-resistance devices, a re-entry capsule, a number of small satellites and other equipment.

For Macau-based military observer Antony Wong Dong, there were telling details in the Xinhua photos taken of the bullet-shaped re-entry module soon after it landed in the Badain Jaran Desert, in Inner Mongolia.

“The so-called re-entry capsule looks similar to China’s hypersonic glide vehicle DF-ZF,” Wong said.

Hypersonic gliders could breach THAAD defenses

Last week Beijing conducted the seventh successful test of its DF-ZF glide vehicle designed to defeat US missile defenses.

 

Both Russia and China have recently successfully tested their offset hypersonic gliders, capable of breaching the American THAAD system (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), which it plans to deploy in South Korea; the test comes as a “warning to the US,” according to Chinese military experts.

“The hypersonic tests by China and Russia are aimed at causing a threat to the US, which plans to set up a missile defense system in South Korea,” the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper writes, quoting Professor He Qisong, a defense policy specialist at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.

His comment refers to the recent successful tests by the two countries of their offset Hypersonic Gliders.