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m******g
发帖数: 621 | 1 这个BILL GERTZ是么背景，跟DOD关系紧密，每次这种消息都是他先传出来的。NB
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http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-conducts-third-fl
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China conducted the third flight test of a new hypersonic missile this week
as part of its strategic nuclear program and efforts to develop delivery
vehicles capable of defeating U.S. countermeasures, defense officials said.
The flight test of the developmental Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle was
monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies Tuesday during a flight test in
western China.
The latest flight test followed earlier tests of the Wu-14 on Jan. 9 and Aug
. 7. The three tests indicate that China’s development of a strike vehicle
capable of traveling up to eight times the speed of sound is a high-priority
element in China’s large-scale military buildup.
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the test but declined to provide details.
“We are aware of reports regarding this test and we routinely monitor
foreign defense activities,” Marine Corps Lt. Col. Jeff Pool told the
Washington Free Beacon.
“However, we don’t comment on our intelligence or assessments of foreign
weapon systems,” Pool added, noting that the Pentagon has encouraged China
to adopt greater openness with regard to its defense investments and
military objectives “to avoid miscalculation.”
Last month in Beijing, the United States and China agreed to a new military
accord that called for notifying each country of major military activities.
It could not be learned if the Chinese notified the Pentagon in advance of
the Wu-14 test.
The Wu-14 was launched atop a Chinese ballistic missile and released along
the edge of space.
Past tests of the glide vehicle were clocked as reaching an estimated speed
of Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound—around 7,680 miles per hour.
Such speeds create difficult aeronautics and physics challenges for guidance
systems and place extreme stress on materials used in construction of the
vehicle.
The annual report of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security
Review Commission, made public Nov. 20, reveals China’s hypersonic weapons
program is a major development effort.
The report said the People’s Liberation Army “is developing hypersonic
glide vehicles as a core component of its next-generation precision strike
capability.”
“Hypersonic glide vehicles could render existing U.S. missile defense
systems less effective and potentially obsolete,” the report said.
The report said once deployed the Wu-14 “could enable China to conduct
kinetic strikes anywhere in the world within minutes to hours.”
China plans to deploy its high-speed glide vehicle by 2020 and a scramjet
powered hypersonic vehicle by 2025.
Lee Fuell, technical director for force modernization and employment at the
National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), told the Commission that
Chinese glide vehicle is launched on a ballistic missile, dives to
hypersonic speed and glides to its target. The weapon currently is assessed
to be “associated with [China’s] nuclear deterrent forces.”
“Of great concern would be if [China] was to apply the same technology and
capability with a conventional warhead or even just without a warhead
because of the kinetic energy that it has in combination with their theater
ballistic missiles … in a theater role,” Fuell said.
The intelligence analyst said that hypersonic vehicles “are extremely
difficult to defend against because just the time is so compressed between
initial detection, being able to get a track, being able to get a fire
control solution, and then just being able to have a weapon that can
intercept them in some way just because of the speed at which they’re
moving.”
“If that is combined with more traditional ballistic missile attacks
forcing a target to defend against very high aspect warheads coming in this
way at the same time they have to defend against low altitude, very high
speed targets coming in [another] way, it makes the defense problem orders
of magnitude worse for the defender,” he said.
The commission report stated that China is expanding its strategic nuclear
forces “significantly,” with deployment of new missiles, submarines, and
multiple-warhead weapons.
Rick Fisher, a China military affairs analyst, said more tests are needed
for China to turn the Wu-14 into a working weapon.
“But the real story is that such a program is now well underway,” said
Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center. “For
hypersonic systems, all tests, failures, and successes, provide a positive
contribution toward the goal of developing a weapon.”
The Wu-14 is part of what military analysts have said in a growing
hypersonic arms race involving China, Russia, and the United States.
Russia’s government announced last month that Moscow plans to field
hypersonic missiles by 2020.
By contrast, U.S. development of a hypersonic weapons program has been
limited.
The Aug. 25 test of the Army’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon ended in disaster
after the booster launching the weapon blew up shortly after launch from a
test base on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
Funding for hypersonic weapons development also has been limited to around $
360 million dollars, an amount critics say is small compared to estimated
investments by China.
“It is now necessary for the United States to substantially increase
funding in two areas,” Fisher, the China military analyst said. “First the
U.S. must expand and accelerate its own hypersonic weapons program.”
The Pentagon should fund several types of hypersonic systems in a
development competition, Fisher said, as well as further research in counter
-hypersonic arms.
Past Pentagon research has included development of both guided-but-unpowered
glide vehicles, and high-technology scramjet-powered hypersonic vehicles.
A space plane called the X-37 also is being developed as part of a program
known as conventional Prompt Global Strike.
U.S. intelligence analysts have said the current Chinese Wu-14 program is
currently part of its strategic nuclear program. However, China also could
use the Wu-14 as part of its conventional strike program, such as planning
attacks on aircraft carriers in the western Pacific.
“While missile based counter-systems may provide an early solution, there
is much more potential in the realm of energy weapons,” Fisher said.
“For example, rail guns offer great potential for early solutions to
maneuvering hypersonic weapons and this technology deserves much greater
funding,” he said.
Fisher also said the United States should increase capabilities for
targeting China’s space and high altitude reconnaissance and surveillance
systems, to include satellites.
“These will be absolutely necessary for China to successfully employ its
long range hypersonic weapons,” he said.
A Chinese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Lora Saalman, an expert on China’s hypersonic development at the Carnegie
Endowment, said after China’s second Wu-14 test in August that the
closeness of the first two tests showed that Beijing is “fast-tracking”
the strategic program.
“When compared with the yearly gaps in between its [anti-satellite] and [
ballistic missile defense] tests in 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014, the WU-14
accelerates China’s development timeline exponentially,” she said in an
email in August.
Saalman believes the Wu-14 is part of a Chinese version of the U.S.
conventional Prompt Global Strike program.
Lora Saalman, an expert on China’s hypersonic development at the Carnegie
Endowment, said China’s third test of the Wu-14 in one year is unusual.
“Not only does this third test of the WU-14 in one year indicate that this
is a priority program for China, it also suggests that U.S. historical
concerns over a Chinese quantitative ‘sprint to parity’ in nuclear weapons
are misdirected,” she said.
“Instead, China is racing ahead on qualitatively developing their advanced
conventional weapons,” Saalman stated in an email. “Such developments are
significant in that the posture guiding use of these weapons is not guided
by nuclear taboo or no first use.”
Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic forces specialist, said the
latest Chinese hypersonic vehicle test poses “a serious threat.”
“The National Air and Space Intelligence Center has said in open testimony
before the China Commission that the vehicle is nuclear and there may also
be a conventional version,” Schneider said.
“There is not really a race in hypersonic weapons,” he added. “U.S.
programs are small scale due to budget cuts.”
Russia’s announced programs on hypersonics include a high-speed missile for
a new stealth bomber, hypersonic warheads for Russian ballistic missiles,
and a joint cruise missile program with India, Schneider said. “We are
clearly losing our technical edge.”
- See more at: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-conducts-third-flight-test-of-hypersonic-strike-vehicle/#sthash.OMEfdQiz.dpuf |
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