China Conducts Third Test Of Game-Changing Missile
Defense Threat: China conducts its third test in a year of a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade our missile and other defense systems, including the Aegis defense system guarding our carrier battle groups.
As we downsize our military, scale back weapons procurement and development, China proceeds at top speed towards weapons designed to counter our once-huge technical advantage and qualitative superiority. Case in point is the third flight test of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, following earlier tests on Jan. 9 and Aug. 7 of this year.
The U.S. Navy is particularly concerned, as an HGV would be a potent weapon against U.S. carrier battle groups in the western Pacific.
A Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile — the road-mobile DF-21D, called a "carrier killer" by some — already poses a potent threat, but it is countered by our extraordinarily capable sea-based Aegis missile defense.
In February 2008, the Aegis missile cruiser Lake Erie shot down a National Reconnaissance Office 2.5-ton spy satellite before it could strike the Earth with its deadly hydrazine fuel tank nearly full.
"The beauty of the HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle) is that it can perform hypersonic precision strikes while maintaining a relatively low altitude and flat trajectory, making it far less vulnerable to missile defenses," says Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
The WU-14 was launched as part of a missile from the Jiuquan satellite launch facility in China's western Gobi desert and released at the edge of space. It re-enters the atmosphere somewhat like our now retired space shuttle but at a speed of 10 times the speed of sound as it maneuvers toward its intended target.
The WU-14 is capable of pulling up after it re-enters the atmosphere and then gliding as it approaches its target. Because it re-enters the atmosphere before a traditional ballistic missile would and can maneuver once it does, it's harder to detect and hit.
Such weapons "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," Lee Fuell, technical director for force modernization and employment at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center,
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/120814-729614-china-tests-high-speed-strike-missile.htm#ixzz3LNtZH5t4
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