The 8th Boost-Glide test, an ICBM with MiRV, or...?
The 8th Boost-Glide test, an ICBM with MiRV, or...?
By Henri Kenhmann - East Pendulum - 19 May 2017
Chinese Hypersonic Gliding Vehicle (HGV) - artist rendition
On May 18, 1980,
37 years ago, China carried out its first and only intercontinental full-scope ballistic test with what they called the "transport rocket", actually the DF-5 ballistic missile, which hit an area of 70 nautical miles in the southern Pacific Ocean.
And thirty seven years later, and as if to commemorate this important date, Chinese Rocket Forces seem to have conducted a large-scale trial in the western part of China this day.
In addition to 9 aerial segments closed to aircraft over a wide area measuring 1,270 km in length and 330 km in width, a large 422,308 km² fallout area in Xinjiang Province was also notified and access was prohibited.
This figure of 422,308 km² seems little, but it is as if 77% of the surface of metropolitan France is totally closed in an armament test and transformed into fallout zone.
No Chinese test in recent years has reserved such a wide security zone, if our tracking is correct.
By way of comparison, the final fallout zone of the new DF-5C test with MiRV this year in January measured only 125,336 km², just less than one third of this test. France's last test run of the M51 missile in Operation Bellérophon which took place on July 1, 2015, had only a final fallout zone within a 92 nautical mile radius, or 90,938 km².
According to the four Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) concerned, this test would had taken place between 01:20 and 02:30 UTC, that was from 07:20 to 08:30 BJT. The shape and orientation of the prohibited areas seem to suggest that the launch of any gear originated in eastern China, probably from the Taiyuan Space Launch Center (TSLC), used frequently in Chinese ballistic tests.
A1119 / 17
Q) ZLHW / QARLC / IV / NBO / E / 000/999 /
A) ZLHW B) 1705180110 C) 1705180230
E) THE FLW SEGMENTS OF ATS RTE CLSD:
1.W188: LIKMI - GOVSA.
2.W66: NUKTI - EJINAQI VOR 'JNQ'-GOBIN.
3.B215: JIAYUGUAN VOR 'CHW' - NUKTI.
4. W187: TUSLI- DUNHUANG VOR'DNH '- NUKTI.
5.G470: BIKNO- DUNHUANG VOR'DNH'- AKTOB.
6.W191: DUNHUANG VOR'DNH'-MOVBI.
7.W192: TUSLI-RUSDI.
A1118 / 17
Q) ZLHW / QARLC / IV / NBO / E / 000/999 /
A) ZLHW B) 1705180110 C) 1705180330
E) THE FLW SEGMENTS OF ATS RTE CLSD:
1. B330: YABRAI VOR 'YBL'-MORIT.
2. W66: DENGKOU VOR 'DKO'-GOBIN.
A1125 / 17
Q) ZWUQ / QRTCA / IV / BO / W / 000/999 /
A) ZWUQ B) 1705180120 C) 1705180230
E) A TEMPORARY RESTRICTED AREA ESTABLISHED BOUNDED BY:
N420010E0953153-N423458E0851212-N420109E0845143-N393631E0780251-N375138E0802409-N381132E0825744-N395343E0921913 BACK TO START.
VERTICAL LIMITS: GND-UNL.
F) GND G) UNL
In yellow, the area & aerial segments prohibited from overflying. In orange, closed areas partially under 6,000 m (Image: East Pendulum)
So what type of weapon requires such a large fallout zone?
We can start from the first assumption that the riskier the subject of the test, the more precautionary measures people must prepare, the greater the safety zone must be reserved to avoid collateral damage.
The next question we can ask is, what risks can we have to justify the establishment of a security zone three times greater than that for a MiRV test, with a priori knowledge that a ballistic weapon must cover about 1,500 to 2,000 km before arriving at this one?
Our first thought goes for a highly maneuverable machine, whose longitudinal and lateral maneuverability exceeds a few tens to see a hundred kilometers of MiRV heads.
Ramjet / Scramjet type hypersonic missiles may already be discarded due to the very long (> 2,000 km) test distance.
The upper Supersonic / Hypersonic Drone that we have already spoken several times here on East Pendulum could match but the duration of the flight, 80 minutes at the most, is much less than previous flights.
So what left is a
hypersonic vector that the Chinese have already tested 7 times, a priori all successful, during the last 3 years - the gear
Boost-Glide (
Hypersonic Glider).
This type of craft is
precisely characterized by its very great lateral maneuverability in terminal approach phase. The United States HTV-2 had 16,677 km of rectilinear distance and 5,560 km of lateral deviation, which corresponds to 1/3 of the flight distance.
And if we look again at the areas of this Chinese test, we could distinguish two flight directions - one (in white) that goes from the TSLC center to the Korla site, and the other (red) Taklamakan desert.
The distance of the deviation is also approximately 1/3 of the total range.
The two flight directions in the test of May 18, 2017 (Image: East Pendulum)
To make sure that the firing direction of this Chinese test remains consistent with the last Boost-Glide tests, we chose to overlap the no-fly zones of the 5th Chinese Boost-Glide test, which took place on 20 August 2015, with those of yesterday.
The 5th test was chosen because, according to Pentagon sources, the Chinese machine, known as the DF-ZF (formerly known as the Wu-14 as referred by the Americans), carried out "evasive maneuvers" (evasive actions).
The light colored areas in the diagram at the bottom shows the trajectory of this 5th DF-ZF and the last drop zone near Korla illustrates the lateral maneuvers of the craft.
And the result of this superposition shows that the flights of 20 August 2015 and 18 May 2017 could be of the same nature. It can therefore be assumed that the test of May 18, 2017 would correspond to a Boost-Glide machine, also capable of performing lateral deviation but much more importantly.
The no-fly zones of the 5th Boost-Glide test (blue) and those of 18 May 2017 (Images: East Pendulum)
Of course, other hypotheses are possible and the Boost-Glide machine is only one possibility, perhaps more credible, among many others.
In any case, it is particularly noteworthy that the institutional media of the Chinese Army, such as the "PLA Daily" newspaper, for example, published many articles on rocket forces on 18 May. Knowing the communication habits of the Chinese army, if the test has indeed taken place, it can only be a success.
Note that some of these articles published yesterday even revealed interesting information, such as on the "new" MRBM DF-16 and DF-16A for example, but we will have the opportunity to come back in the near future.
Henri K.