Mainland state media have acknowledged for the first time that China is developing a state-of-the-art intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) equipped with multiple nuclear warheads that could defeat America's anti-missile defences.
On Wednesday, the Global Times, a newspaper under the party mouthpiece People's Daily, denied a report by the consultancy IHS Jane's last week that a Dongfeng-41, or DF-41, had been test-fired last month by the Second Artillery Corps, the People's Liberation Army's strategic missile force. Instead, it said, such a missile was being developed.
The Jane's report quoted anonymous US officials as saying that the Second Artillery Corps had conducted the first flight test of a DF-41, the third generation of China's ICBMs. It was the first time the US authorities had confirmed the existence of the missile project.
Andrei Chang, who edits the Canadian-based Kanwa Asian Defence Monthly, said it was unlikely the missile corps was currently able to launch a full-course flight test for its third generation ICBM.
"The challenges and difficulties between the second and third generation of ICBMs are very complicated, and the intelligence I've gathered tells me that China is still incapable of overcoming many problems, even though they have spent more than 20 years to develop it," Chang said. Antony Wong Dong, chairman of the Macau-based International Military Association, said China's third generation ICBMs would not be named DF-41 because that project was cancelled years ago.
The Global Times quoted Wei Guoan , a Chinese military expert familiar with the missile corps, as saying that China is developing a third generation ICBM which meets the descriptions in the Western media, but he denied that the missile tested on July 24 was a DF-41.