By developing new weapons and missiles, China has always continued to surprise and outsmart its Western opponents. And this was again witnessed on April 19, when the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) shared a video clip exhibiting an earlier unknown missile being launched from a Type 055 guided-missile cruiser. According to an ANI report, most experts believe that the new weapon is an anti-ship ballistic missile, dubbed YJ-21 by analysts.
Further, the YJ-21 was launched from the Type 055 cruiser Wuxi warship, which had only been commissioned a month before in Qingdao. Since it was launched from an active-duty ship, the hypersonic missile is currently almost definitely in Chinese PLA service.
In addition to this, the new Chinese weapon appears to have tiny fins and a bi-conic snout, as shown in the video. The hypersonic missile’s tiny control surfaces indicate that it is not a surface-to-air missile (SAM), which is needed to be highly manoeuvrable to attack fast-moving aircraft, ANI reported.
The YJ-21 ranges somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometres
The YJ-21 has been cold-launched from Wuxi warship’s stern vertical launch system (VLS), which means the missile was gas-expelled from the launcher cell before its own engine started after it was in the air and free of the ship. The YJ-21 must fit inside the constraints of Chinese VLS cells, which can accept missiles up to 9 metres long and 850 mm in diameter. The YJ-21’s performance characteristics are unknown at this time; however, its range might be somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometres, ANI reported.
Even though the YJ-21’s origins are unknown, it might have been derived from the Chinese CM-401 missile, which is similar to Russia’s Iskander short-range ballistic missile that was recently employed against Ukraine.
Apart from this, according to a Congressional Research Service assessment of China’s naval capabilities, “China is developing hypersonic glide vehicles that, if incorporated into China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles, could make China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles more difficult to intercept.”
According to the ANI report, this has clearly happened recently. Due to its high speed, this sort of ballistic missile with a big payload may target enemy capital ships like American aircraft carriers and assist overwhelm surface combatant defences. Any battleship attacked by a mix of supersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic missiles would be vulnerable.
Because of their long-range weaponry, Chinese Type 055s have become perhaps the most lethal warships in the world when equipped with this new type of ballistic missiles, as per media reports. It is unknown whether the YJ-21 will be used to arm other PLAN vessels, such as the latest Type 052D destroyer.
Meanwhile, new weaponry, including the YJ-21 ship-launched ballistic missile and this air-launched ballistic missile, pose a serious danger to naval and ground targets for several nation. They also show China’s great advancement in armament, which is leaving the United States in its wake in many respects.