A civilian-recorded footage of a hypersonic missile test involving a visibly straight trajectory was shared on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The footage from Chinese social media platform Weibo shows a hypersonic missile that might go multiple ways in terms of prediction due to the fact that China is known to be working on several types of hypersonic missiles.
To understand what might be tested better, a detailed look at the footage is needed. It is seen that the missile is already in the descent phase, which is ballistic in terms of profile in the first seconds. However, a second ignition is clearly visible, after which the missile appears to follow a visibly straight trajectory.
While many sources have pointed out a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), this might not be the case, as they perform unpowered flight after the boost ends, and they start making their descent.
At this point, there are two possibilities for the type of missile tested which would be a ballistic missile with two stages or a hypersonic cruise missile.
A two-stage missile would likely activate its second ignition at descent to attain hypersonic speeds at terminal approach to make interception harder and have extra energy for manoeuvres. YJ-20 anti-ship ballistic missile for warships fits this category.
On the other hand, a hypersonic cruise missile needs to reach hypersonic speeds to activate its scramjet. The descent being brief can be interpreted as the main missile reaching the optimal altitude for cruise in this context, aside from the activation speed. YJ-19 anti-ship missile and the larger CJ-1000 (Successor of CJ-100 long-range supersonic cruise missile) fit this category.
All of the missiles mentioned above were unveiled officially during the 2025’s military parade alongside other hypersonic missiles like YJ-21 and YJ-17. However, some of them, like YJ-20, were seen months prior to the unveiling, so one of the new hypersonic missiles reaching the testing phase would be no surprise.
Author: Kaan Azman
Editor: Özgür Ekşi
