Chinese state-owned television aired footage of a high-altitude balloon dropping hypersonic weapons in 2018.
The stunning footage displays a high-altitude balloon, not dissimilar from the one that traversed over the United States last week, carrying three hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) into high altitude and dropping them for testing.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on the weapons test in September 2018. The footage has since been deleted from Chinese media, but photographs and short clips can still be found online.
In one post from 2018, a Twitter user shared footage from Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, which shows the balloon lifting the three HGVs from the ground.
Screenshots from this Douyin short video. pic.twitter.com/XvhnzMhhY7
— dafeng cao (@dafengcao) September 21, 2018
The black one i.e. D18-2/S using different material featuring cantilever wing is rare in hypersonic configuration design. pic.twitter.com/m6vRJ6Jyub
— dafeng cao (@dafengcao) September 22, 2018
HGVs are generally launched by rockets in a similar manner to traditional missiles. Upon reaching orbit, however, HGVs detach from the rocket and fly through the atmosphere using their own momentum.
Such weapons are much faster than other missiles while they are in low orbit, but become much slower upon hitting the dense air of the atmosphere as they have no jets to power them. The three HGVs dropped by the balloon in the footage appear to have been designed to test this phenomenon.
The balloon-dropped HGVs were part of an effort to develop precision warheads for hypersonic weapons, which would give the Chinese military an “unstoppable nuclear-capable weapon,” according to the South China Morning Post.
