China's DF-100 Anti-Ship Missiles Are Ready To Sink the U.S. Navy
Sebastien Roblin
Security,
Set to kill America's aircraft carriers.
Key point: Pertinent questions remain about China's new missile.
On October 1, 2019, the People’s Liberation Army rolled out an impressive procession of advanced new weapons systems to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.
Still, many of the weapons officially debuted that day, like the DF-17, the first hypersonic missile to officially enter regular service, had been public knowledge for some time.
But that was not the case for the regiment of sixteen ten-wheel TEL trucks that came rolling past Tiananmen Square, each lugging two octagonal launch canisters with the designation ‘DF-100’ prominently stenciled on their sides. You can see the video footage here.
The DF, or Dongfeng (“East Wind”) designation, is mostly reserved for China’s many types of ballistic missiles, which arc high into the atmosphere before plunging down at tremendous speeds. But the existence of the DF-100 had never been reported before.
Curiously, the announcer seemed to ignore the DF designation.
“Here comes the CJ-100 cruise missile formation…the latest in the CJ series. The hypersonic weapon features high precision, and long-range strike capability, as well as fast response.”
The CJ-designator, for Cháng Jiàn (“Long Sword”), is used for a land-attack cruise missile, which skim close to the earth’s surface over hundreds of miles. So what on Earth is the CJ-100 or DF-100?
The “CJ-100”
The DF-100’s launch canisters afforded no glimpse of the missiles supposedly inside. But a week earlier on September 25 the PLA Rocket Force posted a video montage including a two-second clip of the launch from a desert test site of a “CJ-100” missile which had never been seen before—then removed that segment shortly afterward.
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