China, like North Korea, blasts off a new missile while the US is focused on Ukraine

China has launched a hypersonic anti-ship missile from a cruiser, adding to concerns in the US about Beijing’s rapid development of weapons that can hit targets at more than five times the speed of sound. Broadcasting its latest missile project, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) released video footage of the launch from a Type 055 Renhai-class cruiser. The new hypersonic missile, named by western analysts as the YJ-21, will be one of many weapons in the PLAN’s arsenal with the capability to target and destroy US Navy aircraft carriers. China has for years followed a policy aimed at denying access to western warships in the region as part of its overall strategy to dominate the Indo-Pacific. Already possessed of two “carrier-killer” ballistic missiles, the Dong-Feng 21D and DF-26, the new YJ-21 ship-launched hypersonic weapon will pose an even greater potential threat. Hypersonic missiles are more manoeuvrable in flight and, as a result, difficult to detect and track. The Type 055 cruiser is already a heavily-armed warship and plays a key part in escorting China’s aircraft carriers. If it is now to be armed with hypersonic missiles it will become one of the most potent warships in the world. There are eight of these cruisers. The US has yet to field a shipborne hypersonic missile although the US Navy and US Army are jointly developing a weapon called conventional (non-nuclear) prompt strike (CPS) which has been designed for launch from a warship and submarine, and from land. Currently the US Navy relies on the Tomahawk cruise missile which has a range of more than 1,000 miles but is subsonic (slower than the speed of sound), and therefore easier to detect although it can also manoeuvre in flight. The US Navy is planning first to arm the Zumwalt-class destroyer with hypersonic missiles but this is unlikely to happen until 2025. China and Russia appear to be ahead of the US in the hypersonic arms race. The new footage of the missile launch from the PLAN cruiser indicates that Beijing has further stretched the gap in capability between the US and China. Last August China took the world by surprise when it launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle off the back of a Long March rocket and then flew around the planet in low orbit undetected. China claimed it was a routine spacecraft test but US intelligence services confirmed the Chinese technology breakthrough. General Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, described the hypersonic experiment as America’s “Sputnik moment”, a reference to the Soviet Union’s groundbreaking launch of an orbiting satellite on October 4, 1957. Russia became the first country to fire a hypersonic missile in combat when it launched a Kinzhal (Dagger) system at an underground weapons depot in western Ukraine. The Kinzhal which was launched from the air, probably by a MiG-31, is claimed by Moscow to have a range of more than 1,200 miles. Russia also has a hypersonic cruise missile, the Zircon, with a claimed speed of up to Mach 9 which can be launched from a warship or submarine; and the nuclear-capable Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle which, like China’s test-firing in August last year, can be launched from an intercontinental ballistic missile.