Don't mind us, just testing our hypersonic missiles by flying it across Taiwan:

Even before the main stage of the exercise kicked off on Thursday, Global Times called them “unprecedented,” adding that Chinese missiles were expected to “fly over the island of Taiwan for the first time.” People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces are also expected to enter the area within 12 nautical miles of the island, and could potentially surround the island “entirely,” it added, citing military “experts.”

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    i've been seeing this "hypersonic missle" term a lot and decided to look it up. i thought it was just like "faster than sound", which big deal, right?

    anyway, hypersonic appears to be a designation above supersonic. supersonic is 1-5x the speed of sound. hypersonic is 5-10x the speed of sound.

    from some chud military weapon wank site:

    This DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle was previously designated by Pentagon as the WU-14. It can deliver both conventional or nuclear payloads. It is launched on top of the missile, but unlike a regular warhead that follows a predictable path, the DF-ZF travels at hypersonic speed and can make sharp maneuvers. Once the glide vehicle separates from the missile it can reach speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 10 (6,173-12,360 km/h) Due to its extreme speed and maneuverability the glide vehicle is much harder to intercept than regular re-entry vehicles. Furthermore gliding extends its range. Furthermore it can approach a target on an unpredictable ballistic trajectory. If initial attack fails it can even reengage the target. Alternatively the glide vehicle can descend to a very low altitude just before reaching its target. This makes it hard to detect and intercept and further improves resistance to air defense systems. Conventional interceptor missiles have difficulty against maneuvering targets traveling faster than Mach 5 (6 173 km/h). So combination of extreme speed and maneuverability allows to overcome even advanced air defense and missile defense systems.

    i'm guessing they are not human piloted but more like computer piloted/human navigated, because those speeds are bonkers. and for reference, pretty much inland mountainous fujian is about 250-500km to basically anywhere in Taiwan or around it.

    so assuming the longest distance at the slowest speed, a missile fired is going to impact it's target just under 5 minutes later. at the shortest distance and the highest speed, it's 1 minute 13 seconds.

    that's wild.

    • 20000bannedposters [love/loves]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Yeah it's why it's a big deal that America didn't have one. We have been selling NATO members on our missile defense systems and China/Russia have leap frogged right over it with these missiles.

      There's a video of one flying across Ukraine and it looks like a glowing orb that is on screen for a second before it's over the horizon.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Crazy how you can make better weapons for a fraction of the cost when the goal of your military isn’t just to shovel money to a handful of companies

        • 20000bannedposters [love/loves]
          ·
          2 years ago

          What's sus? It's the last video. The video kind up with when Russia launched one of their first hypers into Ukraine.

          What's sus the video or the missile?

          • TheCaconym [any]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            What’s sus the video or the missile?

            The video - I didn't manage to find a credible source showing it with a similar description. And most other sources I've found had people heavily suggesting it's either fake or unconfirmed. It also looks slow to me. And this suggests the same - it's about the first video I mentioned above, in which the speed seems roughly similar to the last one you're talking about:

            The speed of a hypersonic missile in terminal phase (right before it hits target) is very high, greater than a mile a second,” Kelly Stephani, a mechanical science and engineering professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "If I had to estimate, this video shows a projectile traveling ~1000-2000 ft to target, and took 2 seconds to impact. If it were a hypersonic missile, it would have traveled that distance in a fraction of a second."

            But then again, it's talking about the terminal phase of flight.

            This, however, seems real but much less fascinating than seeing the thing crossing the sky.

    • MarxGuns [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      At Mach 5, Beijing is a little under 2 hours from DC. At Mach 10, around 55 minutes. It's about the same as from anywhere else in China to anywhere else in the US (since a straight shot goes over the north pole). Makes me wonder, China has a no first strike nuclear policy, what's it's regular missile strike policy? I assume probably another no first strike ever since the debacle in Vietnam.

      • TheOldRazzleDazzle [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I could potentially see a "strike" in the future against one of the uninhabited disputed island territories--not Diaoyu, one even smaller and obscure.

        That's it.