China says it has hypersonic missiles with heat-seeking tech – years before US
- Breakthroughs in the precision and cooling mechanism of infrared sensors are pushing forward the country’s development of hypersonic weapons, researchers say
- Warfare could be transformed by hypersonic missiles able to search for, identify and lock on to targets based on heat signature
Heat-seeking capability allows Chinese hypersonic missiles to home in on almost any target – including stealth aircraft, aircraft carriers and moving vehicles on the street – with unprecedented accuracy and speed, according to the researchers.
The first generation of hypersonic weapons were designed to penetrate missile defence systems and hit fixed targets on the ground at five times the speed of sound or faster. Although China and Russia had deployed some hypersonic missiles, a popular opinion elsewhere was that these weapons had little practical value unless a country wanted to start a nuclear war.
But conventional warfare could be transformed by a hypersonic missile being able to search for, identify and lock on to a target based on its heat signature when flying at low altitudes where the air is thicker, said the Chinese researchers, from the hypersonic infrared homing programme at the National University of Defence Technology.
02:06
Chinese hypersonic weapons test ‘has all of our attention’, US General Mark Milley says