The PLA and Chinese MIC is nortoriouslt secretive, so a publication like this implies that the project is quite far along and that most of the big hurdles have been cleared. Remember that the Chinese MIC is almost all state owned so it doesn’t have to publish puff pieces of appease shareholders.
I’m guessing this is a lot harder to stop than a drone though. If you’re getting a slug of solid metal coming at you at hypersonic speeds, presumably destroying or deflecting it is a non trivial problem. And I’m guessing this kind of weapons would be mounted on ships with nuclear reactors?
With respect, I think that taking lessons in naval warfare from ground warfare is a bit questionable.
Due to the ranges involved naval warfare, drones of sufficient range and power and communications capability are already going to be much larger and more expensive than your average ground combat drone. Not only that, but they have to carry much larger payloads to reliably take out a ship, and they have to be fast and evasive enough to be reasonably capable of penetrating the layered defences of a naval battlegroup when massed. Not only that, but naval drones have to be navalized (made resistant to salt water spray, collapsible wings for storage, etc) and launch platforms are expensive ships, not cheap patches of dirt.
None of the above are problems for ground combat, which makes ground combat suicide drones much cheaper to produce and field in numbers. If you look at current prototypes for naval strike drones, they mostly look like slightly smaller jet fighters instead of much smaller ground combat drones.
I’m not an expert on this stuff either obviously, so I’m just speculating on the benefits China might see in is pursuing this. It’s worth noting that these things aren’t mutually exclusive. I can see how this could be used for specific situations while drones are used as a more general type of weapon. Kind of how Russia uses hypersonics for some pinpoint strikes on high value targets.
I figure there is a reason they’re pursuing this, but could also be a moonshot project where they don’t necessarily expect it to become practical, but want to see how far they can push it. As you said, they’re bound to discover some new tech through this process so even if the particular application doesn’t pan out, it’s not a waste of time to understand this stuff.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
DPRK necromancers.
Paywall
oh here https://archive.ph/2Dcw1
Thanks. Also lmao:
In the US, the navy poured a vast sum of money and decades of work into rail guns, but had to throw in the towel in 2021 to focus their limited resources on hypersonic missiles instead.
weapons news is so funny. here’s the new guy that might kill you
