Can China’s DF-17 Hypersonic Missile Destroy Carriers By Traveling at Mach 10?

Should the People’s Republic of China’s DF-17 Hypersonic missile truly operate with the capacity to destroy carriers nearly 1,000 miles off shore with a maneuvering, precision-guided projectile able to travel at speeds up to Mach 10, there is a significant threat equation likely generating attention at the Pentagon. 

China is known for its advanced hypersonic weapons, and often writes in its government backed newspapers about its carrier-killer anti-ship missiles, yet Mach 10 hypersonic speed and precision-guidance present a different and more significant threat equation. Building an anti-ship missile to travel at sustained hypersonic speeds certainly presents technological challenges, yet adding maneuverability and precision guidance not only requires more advanced engineering but presents a far more serious threat. 

The exact specifics of the DF-17 may not be fully clear, and certainly it may not operate with the performance parameters claimed in the Chinese-government backed newspapers, yet an interesting CSIS Missile Defense Project essay maintains that indeed the DF-17 threats are serious. 

“The DF-17 has demonstrated a high degree of accuracy in testing, with one U.S. government official saying a test warhead “within meters” of its intended, stationary target. U.S. defense officials have also said the DF-ZF HGV performed “extreme maneuvers” and “evasive actions” in previous test flights,” the CSIS Missile Threat essay says.  

The CSIS essay does not say how this precision is achieved persay, and maintaining maneuvering precision at hypersonic speeds is not an uncomplicated task, yet it would make sense that this would be against a stationary target. Maneuvering to hit targets “on-the-move” is altogether different, which is one reason why Pentagon weapons developers are already working on “tech-insertion” plans for now-in-development hypersonic weapons to prepare for a new-generation of hypersonic projectiles able to track and destroy moving targets. “Tech insertion” would include software upgrades to existing hypersonic weapons enabling increased maneuverability against moving targets in ways that are not currently possible.  However, should the CSIS Missile Threat assessment be accurate, the DF-17 was only able to maneuver toward and destroy a stationary target, something which presents a less significant threat to ships moving at fast-speeds. 

Nevertheless, should the CSIS Missile Threat assessment of the DF-17 be accurate, it would present a threat to US Navy surface ships and carriers of a new variety. The existing DF-26 anti-ship carrier-killer missile, for example, can travel as far as 2,000 miles to attack enemy ships, yet it does not travel at hypersonic speeds. If an incoming missile is “not” traveling at hypersonic speeds, then multi-domain sensors, countermeasures and layered ship defenses have a much higher probability of tracking, jamming and intercepting or destroying the missile.  Speed is without question a lethality multiplier, as it of course massively shortens the time window within which ship commanders can defend against the threat.  

There is yet another tactical element of this overall equation which needs to be considered, and it pertains to the rapid maturation of US Navy ship defenses. Navy weapons developers have for years now been fast tracking a number of high-tech enhancements to layered ship defenses to include advanced EW jamming, laser weapons, more sensitive radar and longer-range precision interceptors.  Also, the arrival of hundreds of Medium and Low Earth Orbit Satellites are improving the ability of ship and ground missile defenses to establish a “continuous” target track of an attacking missile as it transits from one radar aperture or field or regard to another. This is particularly critical in the case of hypersonics as missiles traveling at five times the speed of sound can move so fast from one radar field to another that it is simply impossible to track them.  This might be changing, given the progress of the Pentagon’s current efforts to engineer new defenses against hypersonic weapons through satellite networking technologies such as HBTSS, the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Sensor System.