BEIJING (Dispatches) -- China tested a space vehicle in July, not a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile as reported by the Financial Times, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday.
Quoting five people familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reported on Saturday that China had tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that flew through space, circling the globe before cruising down toward its target, which it missed by about two dozen miles. The paper said the feat had “caught U.S. intelligence by surprise”.
“It was not a missile, it was a space vehicle,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press briefing in Beijing when asked about the report, adding it had been a “routine test” for the purpose of testing technology to reuse the vehicle.
The significance of a reusability test is that it can “provide a cheap and convenient method for humans to peacefully travel to and from space”, Zhao said, adding that many companies had carried out similar tests.
The foreign ministry said the test had taken place in July, not in August as reported by the Financial Times.
The United States is closely watching China’s military modernization program. The new test has raised new questions about why the U.S. often underestimated China’s military modernization.
The U.S., 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.
Taylor Fravel, an expert on Chinese nuclear weapons policy who was unaware of the test, said a hypersonic glide vehicle armed with a nuclear warhead could help China “negate” U.S. missile defense systems which are designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles.
“Hypersonic glide vehicles . . . fly at lower trajectories and can maneuver in flight, which makes them hard to track and destroy,” said Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mounting U.S. concern about China’s nuclear capabilities comes as Beijing continues to build up its conventional military forces and engages in increasingly assertive military activity against American provocations in the South China Sea.
Tensions between the U.S. and China have risen as the Biden administration has taken a tough tack on Beijing, which has accused Washington of being overly hostile.