If a new generation of propellants is allowing Sea Ceptor (a 100kg Sidewinder/RAM/HQ-10-class missile) to be advertised with 25km range, and for ESSM Block II and 5-5-5 missile to be firmly classed as medium-range missiles, those same developments can increasingly push HQ-16/Buk into the long-range category. What is imperiled here is not HQ-16, but HQ-9. There are considerable applications for extended-range munitions, ballistic missile defence, etc. but as smaller munitions improve, the need for an enormous 1300kg munition (with an Exocet-sized warhead...) as the standard long-range SAM becomes increasingly questionable, much as the giant >2000kg SAMs of the 1950s and 1960s were eventually deprecated [....] SM-6 is 1.5 tonnes but it coexists with SM-2MR at half the weight as the "standard" munition. That's the kind of relationship I am envisioning, if not with HQ-16 itself then with some new, smaller-than-HQ-9-sized missile that can be dual-packed in UVLS.
