Iran Press/ Asia: The London-based Financial Times reported on Thursday that Beijing launched a rocket that employed a “fractional orbital bombardment” system to propel a nuclear-capable “hypersonic glide vehicle” around the Earth for the first time on July 27, according to four people familiar with US intelligence assessments.
More than two weeks later on August 13, China conducted a second hypersonic test, the report said citing two people familiar with the matter.
The newspaper initially reported, in a story published over the weekend that the first test was done in August, instead of the end of July.
The latest report said that the missile test “stunned” American military and intelligence officials about the Chinese military advance.
It further said that US scientists “were struggling to understand” the hypersonic weapon’s capability, “which the US does not currently possess.”
The US, Russia and China are all developing hypersonic weapons, including glide vehicles that are launched into space on a rocket but orbit the earth under their own momentum. They fly at five times the speed of sound, slower than a ballistic missile. But they do not follow the fixed parabolic trajectory of a ballistic missile and are maneuverable, making them harder to track.
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