The advanced space capability caught US intelligence by surprise. According to the Financial TImes, Five people who were familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket which carried a hypersonic glide vehicle.
The vehicle flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.
However, the missile missed its target by about two-dozen miles, according to three people briefed on the intelligence.
Two others commented that the progress on hypersonic weapons was far more advanced than US officials realised.
A fourth person said: “We have no idea how they did this.”
Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the FT: “Hypersonic glide vehicles . . . fly at lower trajectories and can manoeuvre in flight, which makes them hard to track and destroy.”
Fravel commented it would be “destabilising” if China fully developed and deployed such a weapon in the future.
However, he suggested a test did not necessarily mean Beijing would deploy the capability.
The comments on China’s latest military test come amid surging military tensions and activity around Taiwan.
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Frank Kendall, US air force secretary, suggested China was developing a new weapon. He said China had made huge advances, including the “potential for global strikes . . . from space.”
He did not give exact details but inferred China was developing something akin to the “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System.”