00:01A new Chinese military capability could dramatically change the way long-range air warfare is fought.
00:09According to a Bloomberg report, citing a person with direct knowledge,
00:13China has developed hypersonic glide vehicles capable of launching air-to-air weapons
00:18against high-value aircraft operating thousands of miles away.
00:22The development could threaten some of the most important aircraft supporting U.S. military operations.
00:29These include aerial refueling tankers, airborne early warning aircraft, and flying command posts.
00:35They may not normally operate directly over the battlefield,
00:39but they are absolutely critical to keeping fighter jets in the air,
00:43coordinating operations, and extending the reach of American forces.
00:47The reported capability appears to be part of a much broader Chinese effort
00:52to expand the roles of its enormous missile arsenal.
00:55At the center of the reported capability are hypersonic glide vehicles, or HGVs.
01:01Unlike conventional ballistic warheads, these systems can maneuver through the atmosphere
01:06while traveling at extreme speeds.
01:09That maneuverability can make them significantly harder to predict and intercept.
01:13A hypersonic glide vehicle deployed from China's DF-17 missile
01:17could reportedly travel around 1,500 miles.
01:21That is roughly the distance separating parts of mainland China from Guam,
01:25a major U.S. military hub in the Pacific.
01:28Another system, the DF-27, reportedly has a maximum range of around 5,000 miles.
01:35That would place Hawaii within its reported reach.
01:38But the most significant development may be what China is putting on these weapons.
01:43According to the report, some Chinese hypersonic systems are being equipped with air-to-air capabilities.
01:49For decades, U.S. air power has relied on a powerful support structure operating behind the immediate battlefield.
01:56Tankers refuel fighter aircraft.
01:59AWOC's platforms provide surveillance and command.
02:02Flying command posts coordinate complex military operations.
02:06Destroy those support aircraft, and the effectiveness of the entire force can begin to collapse.
02:12That is why the reported Chinese capability is attracting attention.
02:16Instead of simply attacking a fighter jet, Beijing could potentially target the aircraft that allow hundreds of other aircraft to
02:24operate.
02:24Bloomberg cited a U.S. Air Force China Aerospace Studies Institute assessment,
02:30saying China's missile modernization is increasingly focused on causing coordinated, system-level damage across an adversary's military architecture.
02:39A missile can only hit a distant aircraft if the military knows where that aircraft is.
02:44And that information has to travel from sensors to commanders, and eventually to the missile itself.
02:50At maximum range, a ballistic missile could take 20 minutes or more to reach its target, according to the report.
02:57That creates a dangerous problem.
02:59A tanker or airborne command aircraft is constantly moving.
03:03By the time the missile reaches the predicted location, the aircraft may have changed course.
03:08China, therefore, needs a highly sophisticated network of satellites, sensors, aircraft, and communications systems
03:15to maintain what military planners call the kill chain.
03:19And every link in that chain could potentially be attacked or disrupted.
03:23The reported hypersonic capability is emerging alongside a dramatic expansion of China's missile arsenal.
03:30According to the report, China had at least 3,150 ballistic missiles and around 300 ground-launched cruise missiles as
03:39of 2024,
03:40based on Pentagon estimates cited by Bloomberg.
03:43Those numbers represent a major increase compared with 2015.
03:48China also appears to have accelerated missile production in recent years.
03:52The objective is increasingly clear.
03:54Beijing is developing weapons designed not simply to destroy individual targets, but to disrupt an entire military system.
04:02That includes aircraft, ships, bases, command networks, and critical logistics.
04:08For the United States, the challenge is particularly serious in the Indo-Pacific.
04:13The United States is developing weapons designed to engage aircraft at increasingly long distances.
04:18One example is the AIM-174B, derived from the SM-6 missile.
04:24Its precise range remains classified.
04:27The U.S. Navy has also been testing the AIM-424 Malus, which reportedly has a range exceeding 300 miles.
04:35The Lockheed Martin AIM-260 is also in production, although it has not yet entered service.
04:41Europe is developing its own long-range capability through the Meteor Missile, which can reportedly engage targets more than 100
04:49miles away.
04:50The emerging race is changing the basic mathematics of aerial combat.
04:54Aircraft may no longer need to see each other to become targets, and support aircraft, once considered relatively safe behind
05:02the front line, could increasingly find themselves under threat.
05:05China's reported capability represents a potentially major shift in modern air warfare.
05:11The battlefield could extend thousands of miles beyond the front line.
05:16Tankers, AWOC's aircraft, and command platforms could face threats from weapons launched far beyond the range of traditional air combat.
05:23That could force the U.S. to rethink where and how its most valuable aircraft operate, and it could place
05:31enormous pressure on the systems responsible for detecting, tracking and intercepting incoming missiles.
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