Chinese scientists eye hypersonic weapon able to ‘fry’ telecoms systems in 10 seconds
- Travelling at six times the speed of sound, evading radars along the way, the proposed weapon would be able to strike targets 3,000km away
- Intense electromagnetic pulse or microwaves produced upon explosion would be able to ‘burn out’ key electronic devices within a 2km range
Defeat an army without a fight and without casualties? Quite possible, if a new type of hypersonic weapon proposed by a team of rocket scientists in China becomes reality.
Designed to generate intense electromagnetic pulse capable of wiping out communication and power supply lines, the weapon would have a range of 3,000km – about the distance from China’s east coast to Guam. Cruising at six times the speed of sound, it would cover this distance in 25 minutes.
And when the weapon explodes over the target area, no lives would be at risk. Rather, the strong electromagnetic waves produced would “cause the effective burnout of key electronic devices in the target information network within a range of 2km,” engineering scientist Sun Zheng and his co-researchers at the China Academy said in a paper published this month, in a domestic journal titled Tactical Missile Technology.
Early EMP weapons required a nuclear warhead to generate the pulse energy, and this restricted their applications, whereas the hypersonic EMP weapon would use chemical explosives instead, Sun’s team said.