China Wants to Shoot Down the U.S. Military in a War. Here’s How They Plan it

Warrior Maven video: Just how would the Chinese attack US air assets? Surface to Air missiles? Dogfighting?

​Given the researchers’ description of the program, the new weapon system is likely to have a strong ballistic missile defense component.

byDave Majumdar

The new weapon could be the HQ-19, which is an advanced ballistic missile defense variant ofChina’sexisting HQ-9 air defense system. The existence of that weapon systems development program was first revealed in a 2016 U.S. Defense Department report onChinesemilitary capabilities.

China is developing a new generation of surface-to-air missile defenses, but details are scarce.

What does seem apparent is that the new weapon is being designed to counter a wide range of threats ranging from aircraft to cruise missiles to ballistic missiles. Indeed, the Chinese engineers working on the new weapons system seem to indicate that the new system will be designed to provide long-range ballistic missile defense among its various functions.

(This first appeared last month.)

“Researchers from the academy’s Zhang Yiqun Laboratory have been playing a vital role in the development of China’s new air-defense missile system by designing its control systems – the ‘brain’ of any missile,”reads a China Military Online posting, which by its own description is “authorized by the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and sponsored by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) News Media Center.”