Chinese defence experts are not too impressed with the performance of Russia's Kinjal hypersonic missiles regarding their survivability against American Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems used by Ukraine's Armed Forces to repel air attacks.
Russia's Kinzhal missiles in the battle with Patriot in Ukraine disappointed China
Analysts say Beijing is taking note of the Patriot deployment because the same anti-aircraft missile system is deployed in Taiwan, whose military has more than a dozen batteries and domestically produced air defence systems. In addition, China is surrounded by countries using the Patriot, including US allies Japan and South Korea.
Russia's "Kinzhal" is not the game-changing weapon the Kremlin hoped it would be, Chinese analyst Yin Jie concluded in a recent article in Ordnance Industry Science and Technology (a state-run defence industry and technology periodical).
Yin wrote that "[the Kinzhal's] ability to perform long-range gliding in the atmosphere"— a vital indicator of the quality of a hypersonic weapon —"does not meet the requirements."
The US is also accumulating a large amount of analytical data in Ukraine that will help improve its missile capabilities in the future and, at the same time, give Beijing cause for concern, observers say.
The Chinese can't think about what they see today, they have to think about the future, so the real concern for the People's Liberation Army of China is likely to be what the Ukraine war means for improving existing US air defense systems and missile development of the next generation, Jan Kallberg, a former West Point professor and senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Newsweek.
Analysts note that "the Chinese Dongfeng-17 missile will create problems for the Patriot system due to its flight height and special ballistics." While the US has yet to deploy any hypersonic weapons, China has already tested and deployed air-based, land-based, and sea-based options.
However, such a weapon has not yet been tested against mobile enemy warships equipped with countermeasures. In addition, experts say the "chain of defeat" of the hypersonic missile, " which requires constant updating of data from satellites, may be vulnerable to failures.
