China tests new long-range missile

Financial Times | September 21 2004

China has tested an advanced land-attack cruise missile that will allow its armed forces to strike with high accuracy at targets more than 1,500km away, according to defence journal Jane’s Missiles and Rockets.

Deployment of long-range cruise missiles would mark a new stage in China’s effort to develop the ability to project force beyond its borders and would pose a potentially potent new threat to rival Taiwan.

Officials in Taiwan’s defence ministry and National Security Council said on Monday that the island already had some “basic defence capabilities” against attacks by cruise missiles.

However, military analysts on the island said such defences were inadequate and that long-range mainland Chinese cruise missiles would present a major new challenge.

Taiwan’s anti-missile defences are currently focused mainly on dealing with China’s rapidly growing ballistic missile forces.

Beijing is expected to have deployed more than 700 ballistic missiles against Taiwan by next year and the island’s legislature is currently debating a T$610bn ($18bn) special budget for arms that would include US-built Patriot III anti-missile missiles.

The government’s plan to buy the Patriots is already controversial because they will not be deployed until at least 2012, when China is expected to have built an arsenal of around 1,250 ballistic missiles that would be able to easily overwhelm such defences.

Even if the Patriots can protect some strategic areas, cruise missiles pose a very different challenge from ballistic missiles, flying much more slowly but low enough to make radar detection difficult.

Jane’s Missiles and Rockets said China’s new missile had been designated the Dong Hai-10, or East China Sea-10, and quoted an unnamed US defence source as saying it was likely to be able to hit targets within a radius of 10m.

The journal gave no details of the test, but Chinese media reported the trial of an unidentified new guided missile in August.

In an annual report on the Chinese military released earlier this year, the US defence department said Beijing had already developed several types of cruise missiles, but that most were short-range and for use against ships.

“Development of land-attack cruise missiles for both theatre and strategic missions is a high priority, and air-, ground-, and land-based versions of these weapons most likely will be operational within the next five to 10 years,” the report said.

Jane’s quoted the US defence source as saying China was expected to field a second land-attack cruise missile “within the next few years” that would be able to carry a 500kg warhead up to 500km.

China’s progress in deploying such cruise missiles, which could be launched from land bases, ships or aircraft, is likely to draw close attention from other regional neighbours such as Japan.

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