Chinese Hypersonic Developments (HGVs/HCMs)

[nativechicken]

I don’t quite understand the logic behind the 8,000-km range. At first glance, it looks more like a weapon intended to target Russia, northern Australia (Darwin), and US bases in the Pacific (2nd and 3rd island chain), but even Hawaii is out of range. Is the limited range more of a voluntary restrain (by deliberately not targeting CONUS) on China’s behalf, or is it technological limitation.

Actually, it's quite simple. The purpose behind China's development of ultra-long-range ASBMs is not just to deny the U.S. military access to waters around China (within 5,000 km), but to put an end to any form of maritime unilateral hegemony across almost all oceanic regions worldwide. To put it even more plainly, the advancement of this technology aims to ensure that the truly effective operational range of any navy is confined to its own immediate vicinity.

What you should consider is that, in reality, the theory familiar to the West—that world control is exercised through maritime power—has essentially collapsed. The Chinese understand very clearly what Westerners, especially Americans, Europeans, and Japanese, are thinking, as well as why the maritime power system was able to dominate and control the world in modern times. But it seems many have yet to grasp this fully.

There is an entire logic behind it, explaining how maritime power suppresses land power, thus forming the rationale that controlling the seas means controlling the world.

Ultra-long-range ASBMs fundamentally disrupt the operational mechanism of this system. In other words, the military foundation that allowed the Western world to lead and colonize the globe no longer exists. This is the core of the issue.

Once you understand this, you won’t misguidedly think this is aimed at Russia or Australia. Neither Russia nor Australia possesses the capability to execute a global hegemony system based on maritime power. The only entities capable of implementing such a system are essentially the United States and its NATO allies. By the way, what China is developing is, when necessary, a conventional military means to completely strip the U.S. and its allies of their armed capability to carry out global maritime blockade missions.

 

[nativechicken]

Watching the U.S.-Iran war in the Strait of Hormuz should make it clear: war is never merely a contest of weapons and armies; it is a contest of national will and economic capacity.
War and strategy are not about killing one or two leaders or changing regimes. They are about effectively destroying or weakening the opponent’s economic capacity. In wars between major powers with military and regional hegemonic experience, inflicting casualties and destroying equipment alone cannot achieve the desired outcomes or gains. Instead, it easily leads to uncontrollable situations.
For a country like China, with 5,000 years of war history, the reluctance to engage in war stems from the Chinese people’s understanding and hatred of war, knowing the immense destruction it brings to society. Every effort should be made to prevent war or reduce its intensity.
Therefore, China is unwilling to lightly initiate war. Once war begins, it must thoroughly resolve the issue. In other words, either avoid the war entirely, or fight it to achieve a long-term stable outcome.
Comparing the U.S.-Iran (including Israel) war, it is very clear that the U.S. and Israel seek a temporary ceasefire because they hold the strategic initiative in attacks. Iran, as the militarily and technologically disadvantaged side, has long been under sanctions and restrictions. Thus, a temporary ceasefire is cost-effective for the U.S. and Israel—if this round doesn’t go well, they can try again next time. The core goal of the U.S. and Israel is to leverage their technological superiority to keep Iran from developing, perpetually weakening it.
Now Iran clearly recognizes this and is unwilling to be continuously weakened. It hopes to achieve a truly effective end to the war, securing at least 20–30 years of stable development. That is why it is making its current demands.
I mention this topic first to help everyone understand one thing: the dilemma Iran faces today is the same challenge China encountered after its founding in 1949. That is why most Chinese people understand and support Iran.
Therefore, you must understand one point: why does China need ultra-long-range ASBMs? The reason is simple: like Iran today, if the U.S. cannot achieve military victory near Iran, it will inevitably expand the scope of force to economically strangle the opponent—specifically, by imposing a comprehensive maritime blockade. This forces the sanctioned country into isolation from global economic and technological exchange, cutting it off from world trade, leading to long-term economic backwardness. As living standards decline or hardship sets in, dissent emerges—surrendering or compromising factions (packaged as Western-style democrats)—accelerating the opponent’s internal collapse.
In fact, this logic has long been a Western hegemonic tool for controlling the world, employed for nearly 200 years. China has also been targeted by such methods for many years.
Given China’s current military power, especially after the U.S.-Iran war, anyone thinking clearly would not believe there are many opportunities for direct conflict between China and the U.S., or that the likelihood is high. However, it is almost certain that the U.S. will organize at least some countries to impose military and economic blockades on China. Using its network of 800 global military bases, the U.S. will control key maritime trade hubs and routes, severing China’s external economic and trade links, forcing China out of the global economic system. The current blockade against Iran demonstrates this inevitability.

 

[nativechicken]

Why do this? Behind it is the question of how the Western world rose 400 years ago, starting with the Age of Exploration, which marked the beginning of Western global dominance. How did they achieve effective control? There is much to say, but for brevity, I’ll skip it.
The core is maritime power. After the world entered the industrial era, industrial production and processing (with improved efficiency) replaced traditional manufacturing. The fear that Western societies (the U.S. and Europe) now have toward China’s industrial capabilities, such as in electric vehicles, is essentially the same as when mechanized looms replaced traditional hand-spinning, or cars replaced horse-drawn carriages. It is a revolutionary increase in productivity, using the advantages of scale and efficiency to flood the world with cheap industrial goods, disrupting localized, self-sufficient economies. The global consumption of cheap industrial goods destroyed the traditional commercial systems of backward countries, establishing a new economic cycle (of products, currency, and trade). The West, entering the industrial age first, used military colonization and industrial dumping to plunder global wealth, causing long-term backwardness (in technology, industry, etc.) in colonized regions and fostering the perception of Western civilizational superiority.
Among these, maritime power was the crucial and core link ensuring colonial regimes and the flow of industrial goods. This is why maritime power dominated the world.
So why can maritime power overpower land power? The U.S.-Iran war shows that air bombardment alone cannot destroy a regime. In Chinese eyes, the Iranian regime also has significant internal issues. The fact that leaders can be assassinated at will indicates many problems within the Iranian regime, largely due to the effectiveness of Western cognitive operations that obscure the truth for many citizens.
Iran knows how to win the war: drag the U.S. into ground warfare and fight a war of attrition. This is essentially economic warfare, not about conquering the opponent by force but exhausting them through the costs of war to achieve strategic deterrence.
In real world history, maritime power’s suppression of land power was never about the maritime side’s ability to completely destroy the opponent. Instead, it relied on long-term, low-cost harassment to push the opponent into economic collapse (effective against small countries, but limited against China). The reason is that maritime powers generally possess certain technological advantages, enabling them to defeat larger forces in smaller-scale engagements. The military reason maritime nations dominated the world for centuries is similar to how the Mongols (nomadic tribes) harassed China for hundreds of years. Essentially, it’s about mobile warfare, guerrilla tactics—concentrating superior strength, striking, and retreating without engaging the opponent’s strongest forces directly.
For China, the challenges posed by maritime threats (including Japanese wokou pirates harassing the coast since the Ming Dynasty, which were essentially piracy) were similar to those posed by nomadic tribes. The defending side had to establish extensive defensive positions along long contact lines, stationing troops and waiting for close combat to effectively inflict damage.
Otherwise, they would be exhausted, led around by the opponent. The vast seas, like the vast grasslands, made it impossible to detect the enemy in advance or predict their attack routes, preventing effective containment. This is the core reason land power failed against maritime power—it’s the fog of war. Whether facing nomadic tribes (bandits) or maritime wokou (pirates), the issue was the same.

 

[nativechicken]

So what has changed now? Simply put, technological advancements, especially in aerospace and radio (radar technology), have made the battlefield transparent. Today, China fears no maritime threats because it has the eyes to penetrate the fog of war (space-based satellites + advanced radar networks) and rapidly mobile strike weapons, including various missiles, especially ASBMs. The ability to see and strike maritime targets across the entire operational range is what enables China, a land power, to potentially win a maritime war.
Compared to land warfare systems, maritime power has never truly possessed overwhelming force (assuming the weapon generation gap isn’t too large—attacking a small country with only a few million people is always winnable, but such small countries can hardly be said to possess land power). Therefore, if maritime power isn’t primarily about harassment, it has never been truly fearsome. The Eight-Nation Alliance understood this 150–180 years ago. Their victory over China had many preconditions, including that China’s ruling class was already in the late stage of dynastic transition. Even then, they didn’t achieve true occupation of Chinese territory, similar to Japan’s later invasion. Land powers can only be defeated on land by maritime powers when they are in internal turmoil.
Looking at history today, before the founding of New China, China’s ruling class, like some so-called moderate democrats in Iran, harbored illusions about the West, constantly compromising and conceding interests in exchange for temporary security, only to be betrayed time and again.
Thus, in China’s view, future wars will likely involve maritime blockades of Chinese trade far from its coastline, similar to Ming Dynasty wokou harassing China’s coast. For China, competing with the U.S. to build 800 global bases is unnecessary—such bases are just targets, with little real significance.
The real solution is simple: destroy the U.S.’s maritime military capabilities on a large scale. Without naval vessels, or with a maritime force confined to U.S. coastal waters, what deterrent does U.S. hegemony have? In fact, there’s no need to go globally destroying U.S. maritime power. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater has pointed out—and Wall Street now realizes—that the U.S.-Iran war has begun. If the U.S. cannot ultimately control the Strait of Hormuz, the petrodollar will immediately collapse, the U.S. debt crisis will erupt, and the U.S.’s post-WWII global hegemony will instantly crumble. There will be no more U.S. superpower.
Do you understand now? The ultra-long-range ASBM tool is a military instrument to thoroughly dismantle unilateral maritime hegemony, and to end the 400-year Western maritime system (which controls global trade in the industrial era through maritime dominance). Russia has no maritime power; Australia has no maritime power; the dozens of European countries have no maritime power. The true maritime powers are essentially the U.S.+ Europe/Australia/New Zealand/Japan(NATO), and others, who are likely to join the U.S. in blockading China. Ultra-long-range ASBMs are the tools to destroy the fleets and ports executing this so-called maritime blockade.
Clever people might ask: couldn’t others develop ASBMs to target China? I’ll tell you: this tool is only useful for foolish countries seeking hegemony. China has no interest in such hegemony because it understands clearly that such stupid goals only accelerate national decline. If you want to die early despite your country living long and well, go seek hegemony. Looking at Chinese history, the U.S. reached its peak hegemony less than 40 years ago and is already in decline. The Mongol armies that swept through Europe lasted only about a century. Thus, for a society with deep historical awareness like China’s, hegemony is the most foolish goal.
It’s simple: don’t stir up trouble, and there won’t be so many ASBMs targeting your warships. Moreover, China’s industrial scale and retaliatory capability mean it isn’t worried about such threats. Even if other countries develop advanced ASBMs, they pose little threat to China.
That’s why I say ultra-long-range ASBMs are strategic tools to end superpower hegemony—by globally eliminating the navies that underpin hegemony, they terminate the actual existence of hegemony (maritime blockade capability).
P.S. Let me add: I was actually the first to discover the existence of ultra-long-range ASBMs. Ten years ago, in a thesis from the PLA Naval Command College (Dalian), I came across research on using seven re-entry maneuverable warheads with re-entry speeds exceeding 7,000 m/s (the speed of ICBM re-entry vehicles) for cluster strikes against maritime targets. Back then, I posted about it under the title “DF-31 Variant ASBM,” which was even picked up by overseas media.

 

[Maikeru]

I see MarKoz81 is back.

 

[wuguanhui]

I see MarKoz81 is back.

Is he now MarKoz the White?

 

[Totoro]

An HGV is not a cruise missile; you cannot simply equate its straight-line range with an almost identical detour path.

The HGV itself has no propulsion; its energy comes almost entirely from its burnout velocity.

Of course. HGV's velocity generally keeps dropping after launch. But its altitude also generally keeps dropping, as it trades some altitude for not losing too much velocity over time. And every turn will bleed further velocity, of course. But it has been designed to withstand that. It won't behave completely like a cruise missile - of course those have propulsion and fuel and can upkeep velocity. But HVG will have enough starting velocity so even if it makes several 90 degree turns during its flight it will still retain enough velocity near its terminal dive so it's still lethal.

 

[Confusionism]

Of course. HGV's velocity generally keeps dropping after launch. But its altitude also generally keeps dropping, as it trades some altitude for not losing too much velocity over time. And every turn will bleed further velocity, of course. But it has been designed to withstand that. It won't behave completely like a cruise missile - of course those have propulsion and fuel and can upkeep velocity. But HVG will have enough starting velocity so even if it makes several 90 degree turns during its flight it will still retain enough velocity near its terminal dive so it's still lethal.

No, that's all nonsense. Read some books.

 

[tokenanalyst]

Nobody is going to build a conventional glider weapon over 11000km range to hit a ship, even a CVN doesn't worth the effort. A ship beyond 8000km away isn't a threat, why bother 11000km? War is not a game of words and numbers.

What you are thinking (ICBM ranged HGV) isn't something new. PLA studied it together with 4000km, 8000km. The 12000km weapon would leave the atmosphere making it akin to spacecraft reentry (not speed but air interface issue), which is a totally different kind of challenge. Nobody is able to pull that off yet, but China is ahead of everyone, just look at Shenzhou and Chang'e 5's landing accuracy (prediction vs. actual point).

On the other hand, even when a conventional HGV goes over 10000km, it is no different from a stealthy bomber like B-2 sneak up close and shoot a conventional cruise missile, from base 10000km away. If that doesn't trigger a nuclear response why should a 10000km conventional missile trigger. The whole thing of "anybody else possessing a weapon more advanced than US may risk triggering a nuclear response from US" is American bluffing or in short "I can do it but not you". Haven't you see it, US will attack anyone who can't put US in serious danger, once one can do it, US would become much reasonable.

Here is the actual Chinese approach:

1. does not enter into any negotiation of restriction
2. won't brag about having bigger stick. won't openly threat
3. keep advancing in any avenue
4. keep it a secret and make US wonder.

If the US cannot distinguish between nuclear and conventional attacks it will be forced to temper their behavior

 

[douglaxd]

Of course. HGV's velocity generally keeps dropping after launch. But its altitude also generally keeps dropping, as it trades some altitude for not losing too much velocity over time. And every turn will bleed further velocity, of course. But it has been designed to withstand that. It won't behave completely like a cruise missile - of course those have propulsion and fuel and can upkeep velocity. But HVG will have enough starting velocity so even if it makes several 90 degree turns during its flight it will still retain enough velocity near its terminal dive so it's still lethal.

Multiple 90 degree turns and maintaining >mach 5 terminal velocity sounds ridiculous. The trade-off in altitude will likely bleed more speed than gain, and longer the HGV spends at these lower altitudes beyond terminal phase, the more speed it will lose. There is nothing particularly special about HGV construction that stops it from having to make those heavy tradeoffs.