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China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000
- theturtle 7mo ago[dead]
- srean 7mo agoWhat seems to be the problem with their S300 clones? Anyone knows ? Easy to jam I suppose.
- DetroitThrow 7mo agoS300 is very good AA, but in practice modern SEAD with a sizeable number of planes can outrange them and they're not great at protecting themselves. We saw this in India-Pakistan and seeing this again in Iran-USA. You can see more of a stale mate when they aren't getting outranged in Ukraine-Russia.
- srean 7mo agoI am talking about the Chinese clones, not the original (is there a difference ?). As you mention they did not fare very well in the India-Pakistan conflict.
- esseph 7mo agoAir defense works in layers where each layer often covers for another. S300 is good, but it's just one piece of a useful anti air defense strategy.
- torginus 7mo agoThere's no 'S-300' as such, there are sets of fire control, target acquisition and tracking radars, and various types of missiles, each of which can be upgraded, and mixed and matched to some degree, with some combinations being up to the S-300 standard or better. The closest thing to a standardized variant is the one installed on ships. It's a crazy variety of hardware out therem and one of the most dangerous things about SAMs, that a lot of the old Soviet missile stock is passively guided, so pairing a decades old missile sitting in storage with a state of the art radar makes it relevant even today.
- lejalv 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- code_biologist 7mo agoChat, is this real? I've seen this guy pop up on youtube. I assume he's a Chinese state mouthpiece as he's a westerner in the mainland with a very pro-China spin (substack recommended the other posts below), but I'm curious how strong the factual basis for this reporting is. China's factories are in another world - Mar 23, 2025 Chinese factories build fire trucks for under $400,000 in six weeks. In the US, it's $2 million in 4 years - Apr 19, 2025 Iran is blowing up $500 million radars. China's export bans mean they are gone forever. - Mar 16, 2026
- DetroitThrow 7mo agoThere's a few of these guys that make posts about technology that doesn't materialize after a few years, they can be ignored. There are plenty of pro-China observers that offer grounded analysis of Chinese military-industrial base out there that don't make claims that China has unobtainium technology. /r/LessCredibleDefence has a shortlist of these propagandists.
- fooker 7mo agoYeah it's certainly unimaginable that the civilization that invented gunpowder, cannons, guns, rockets a thousand years ago can make it for cheap now :) 'Hypersonic' missile makes it sound like it's alien technology, no it's solid boosters that do not follow the usual ballistic trajectory with a computer from 1970. The raw materials cost less than half of a standard car.
- esseph 7mo ago"no it's solid boosters that do not follow the usual ballistic trajectory" Hypersonics do not. They are extremely fast and extremely low flying.
- fooker 7mo agoNo, hypersonic is a marketing term here that indicates 'difficult to intercept'. It does not imply anything about speed, just automatic or controlled maneuvering later in the stage than normal missiles do.
- creantum 7mo agoIf they’re half as good as the robot I saw today in china slapping that kid id get a few
- exabrial 7mo agoReal or not, this is probably the future. Lockheed execs want combat to be a distant exchange of multi-million dollar missiles. As shown in Ukraine, people actually fighting for their lives will wreck a $300million weapon with a slingshot.
- TacticalCoder 7mo ago[flagged]
- throwaw12 7mo ago> kill 30 000+ of their own Hasbara or do you have credible facts?
- sephamorr 7mo agoWell, the IRGC folks actually fighting probably don't have a luxurious future in a reformed Iran, so they might not be far off fighting for their lives.
- exabrial 7mo agoI think you're misreading my comment and attacking a scarecrow. I've never defended Iran in any way nor did I say anything about Iran in my original comment. I'm purely referring to that fact that the future of warfare is becoming asymmetric again because the US Military Industrial complex can only deliver extremely expensive weapons, which can easily be wrecked by stone age ones. That is it.
- gpderetta 7mo agoEven in 2026, wars are won by the side that can shoots more bullets (or artillery rounds, or rockets, or missiles, or drones). They better be cheap.
- Forgeties79 7mo agoTake a few days away from the internet man. I mean it with all sincerity.
- ranger_danger 7mo agoIf they're that cheap they can probably afford to cry wolf with them. Get people used to seeing unarmed missles flown in to random places, where the possible damage doesn't justify trying to shoot them down, then suddenly start putting explosives onboard.
- sailfast 7mo agoDo they hit their targets? Eventually with enough of them it’s not super important but… it does matter a bit.
- Loughla 7mo agoAccording to the Google search I just did, an average American hypersonic missile costs between 13 and 41 million dollars. So that is between 131 and 410 of these. At that rate, and with enough disdain for my enemy and apathy for their people, I can just launch a shit load of them in the right direction and cross my fingers.
- serf 7mo agothe concept of 'The average hypersonic..' makes me laugh. in actuality the concept of equating real life dollars to defense budgets makes me laugh, too. It's not really a money thing, it's a production thing; and even if it were to be considered as a money thing the values involved in no way reflect a real life value. It's like the NASA hammer story/packard commission. They're not going to say no to a 435 dollar hammer versus a zillion dollar project, but it's not actually a 435 dollar hammer.. . Similarly a 41 million dollar weapon only costs that much until a wartime powers clause forfeits your factory to state production..
- m000 7mo ago> Similarly a 41 million dollar weapon only costs that much until a wartime powers clause forfeits your factory to state production. I seriously doubt such clauses still exist today. The entrenchment of the MIC in the US political structure is so deep and stretches for so long, that they have probably managed to avoid having such clauses by now. After all, that's their obligation to their shareholders. Also, the more high-tech the weapon, the more complex and fragile are its supply chain logistcs. So, scaling up the production of high-tech weapons is much harder, especially in wartime.
- FpUser 7mo ago>"Do they hit their targets?" Are you sure you want to find out?
- 0x4e 7mo agoAmazing! Yet another life destroying invention. What could go wrong?
- ck2 7mo agowhen China take Taiwan there's not a single thing the world is going to be able to do about it they use thousands of fishing boats to practice blockades they are building massive oil reserves and getting most of population into electric vehicles let's just hope they wait to next decade and not like 2028
- yogibear678142 7mo agoPeople thought the same on Iran, untouchable. China has the same air defense and tech as Iran, not effective in real world situations. Blockades go both ways. China is energy dependant so very vulnerable to blockade response by the US and Japan. A few choke points make it easy, the ocean is not open ended.
- eunos 7mo ago> China has the same air defense and tech as Iran Lmao, quantitatively and qualitatively China is more than an order of magnitude bigger
- dragonelite 7mo agoWell to this day China is getting Iranian energy. This naval blockade is a relic of a past long gone. When you have eyes in the sky and pin point accurate missiles. The US can't even block or free the straight of Hormuz. Also China is friendly with Russia they have land border so they can build pipelines.
- yogibear678142 7mo agoWell first, the US is not restricting oil through hormuz, even Iranian oil. Second, the oil market would disagree that blockading a choke point is not effective. The threat of Iranian missiles has reduced the volume of oil on the market. It's a measurable reduction. And no China does not have pin point accurate missiles. The missed hits on Diego base with Chinese missiles demonstrate that. The nice thing about Iran is they use Chinese tech, and Chinese contractors. It's a good trial run to asses Chinese offensive and defensive abilities. So far they have proven ineffective against western militaries. Even Chinese deep bunker defense is proving ineffective. Iranian officials are now taking their chances sleeping in tents as the deep bunkers are death traps.
- joe_mamba 7mo agoDamn, can you imagine how quickly Aliexpress orders are gonna arrive now?
- abdusco 7mo agoThey will just get stuck at the customs :(
- FpUser 7mo ago>"A Chinese company is in production of a hypersonic missile, with a sticker price comparable to that of a luxury sedan" Well they've perfected manufacturing at scale. I see no surprise here.
- janalsncm 7mo agoThis is what people should keep in mind when the statistic about US defense spending being higher than the next N nations combined or whatever it is now. If I buy a 30k Prius, and you spend 300k on a different car, 1) that doesn’t mean you can drive 10x as fast and 2) maybe you just bought an overpriced Prius, perhaps a gold plated one This is a more general problem in politics, where the overall budget being allocated is reported rather than the practical result.
- torginus 7mo agoYeah, you often read stories on the internet about how the SR-71 could easily outrun the MIG-25, proving US technological superiority, but those don't really take into account that there was like a dozen made of the former, with titanium hulls and exotic engineering. While there were more than a thousand made of the cheap, steel hulled MIG 25
- vsgherzi 7mo agoThese don’t seem comparable to me. The sr 71 was never meant to be mass produced or to head to head against a mig. The sr71 didn’t even have any guns it’s a spy plane. The sr 71 accomplished its goal with flying colors and spotted nuclear test sites and information on the Cuban missle crisis. The star fighter, or f15 or f22 would be more apt. TLDR special purpose tool vs general fighter cannot be compared
- serf 7mo agoIt's a false comparison. How many MIG-25s flew over the borders of the United States mainland during the cold war? Yes the MIG-25 was a cheaper and more practical plane, but that wasn't the MO of the sr71.
- magicalist 7mo agoThis is blogspam based on a tweet of the company's promo video[1] in November and some speculation by a guy on Chinese state TV[2]. As far as I can find there's no evidence since then that these have entered production, mass or otherwise. It was doubted at the time they could hit these costs in production, and there hasn't been any news since. [1] https://xcancel.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1993158707056984359 https://xcancel.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1993158707056984359 [2] https://archive.is/VLO7U https://archive.is/VLO7U
- jsw97 7mo agoYes. I have no idea if this is technologically plausible at this point but it doesn’t make sense strategically. Why would China allow something this dangerous and IP-intensive to be commercialized? We don’t sell our nuclear weapons tech, for example. (I assume.) And the thought that they would want this in the hands of unstable actors, however they are currently aligned, is a little silly. This feels more like a mistake, possibly even a scam.
- whatsupdog 7mo agoYou underestimate both China's production capability and their desire to destabilize the south Asian region, so they can step in to take control. They have been arming Pakistan to the teeth against India. They even sold them the nuclear weapons tech. They don't care.
- defrost 7mo agoBoth the US and China sold nuclear power technology to Pakistan, as I recall France also agreed to sell nuclear power tech to Pakistan .. in a deal that fell through because of something (haven't checked history) in France's domestic politics scene(?). All three countries have denied providing nuclear weapons tech to Pakistan - there is credible history to account for both Pakistan and India to have independantly developed enrichment programs and weapons on their own*. All things are possible, a plausible explanation for the flurry of accusations against China from 2000 onwards from both the US State Dept. and India was the bald fact that the US, the premier global atomic watchdog, was caught absolutely pants down and blindsided by the events of 1998** ... India detonated a series of nuclear weapons tests and Pakistan responded within 30 days with a slightly longer series ( 5 blasts Vs six in response .. IIRC ) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_d... ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagai-I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagai-I U.S. Intelligence and India’s Nuclear Tests: Lessons Learned - https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html The U.S. Intelligence Community did not have advance knowledge that India intended to conduct nuclear tests beginning on May 11, 1998.
- indubioprorubik 7mo agoPakistan invests in chinese air -defenses- gets steamrolled by india. Iran buys chinese air-defenses- gets steamrolled by Israel and the Us. Russia claimed the s400 was all the rage- and its going nowhere in ukraine. If propaganda claims where a currency, could you buy anything with all this?
- andriy_koval 7mo agoair defense is much more complicated and difficult to build. Iranian cheap drones/cruise missiles are efficient from another hand.
- bigyabai 7mo agoPakistan and Iran's imported missiles from China have worked as-advertised. To say nothing of the PL-15's recent success, China's land attack missiles have been a serious threat ever since the Silkworm ASCM hit the export market.
- LorenPechtel 7mo agoThe S400 and the Patriot etc all suffer from the same problem: They only deny the enemy high elevation flight. Russian doctrine has been based around big, fast things going high. NATO doctrine has been about smaller, slower things going very low. Going low leaves you very vulnerable if you get too close to a defender, but there's no way there are defenders everywhere. An extreme example of the problem was the Moskova--big, fast missiles that couldn't see something coming in just above wavetop height. There were only two launchers that had any possibility of engaging and only time for one launch cycle--and that probably only if they already had a bird on the rails. (Exposed to the elements, rather than safe in the magazine.)
- mpweiher 7mo agoI see your $99,000 missile and I raise you a $10 intercept. Time for those laser-defenses to come up to speed.
- torginus 7mo agoLasers have very limited applications, they have an inherent line of sight limits, and even the most powerful ship mounted lasers that can do like 50kW, take a minute to boil a kettle of water away, more if you wrap it in tinfoil. And a shot might cost $10, the laser itself cost $$$, fits only in a cargo container, and requires crazy amounts of juice. Meanwhile a simple AA gun needs none of those things and can kill things just fine.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoLasers will probably only be used for point defenses against drones which isn't useless but they aren't the cheap future panacea everyone seems to think.
- joe_mamba 7mo agoI also played Generals
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoWhat's that?
- joe_mamba 7mo agoOnly one of the best strategy games of all time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2732960/Command__Conquer_Generals_Zero_Hour/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2732960/Command__Conquer_...
- larkost 7mo ago
- beloch 7mo agoWhether these claims are real or not, they do illustrate one of the crazy things about technological progress. Capabilities that are difficult for states to develop eventually become something corporations can easily implement, and from there they become affordable for private citizens, first to buy, and then to DIY. Two obvious and concerning corollaries are that state capabilities eventually become easy to obtain for non-state terrorist groups and, later on, unbalanced individuals. Consider what ISIS would have done with these, and then think about what the unabomber would have done. I'd fully expect this particular company to face multiple hurdles in actually exporting any of these missiles. They might not be able to actually deliver at the quoted price-point. China might not permit it, due to the political blow-back. Israel and the U.S. obviously have an interest in making sure none of these missiles wind up in Iranian hands. The execs of this company are probably feeling a bit like a target has been painted on their heads right now. However, controlling technology like this is ultimately a game of whack-a-mole. If this company fails, gets regulated, decapitated, sucked up by the Chinese military, etc., ten other companies will pop up all over the place that can produce the same thing or better, cheaper. There's also a supply chain of components behind this company that can now export critical parts to those building their own. We've simply reached (or are about to reach) the point where missiles of this sort can be made very cheaply. Here's hoping missile defence gets better and cheaper fast.
- fasterik 7mo agoRelevant philosophy paper: "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis" by Nick Bostrom [0]. In that paper, Bostrom floats the idea that it might be in humanity's best interest to have a strong global government with mass surveillance to prevent technological catastrophes. It's more of a thought experiment than a "we should definitely do this" kind of argument, but it's worth taking the idea seriously and thinking hard about what alternatives we have for maintaining global stability. [0] https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
- Barrin92 7mo agoCheap hypersonics don't threaten global stability, they threaten global hegemony. Which is really what I suspect irks most people afraid of them. We've seen a shift towards cheap offensive capacity that gives middle powers or even smaller actors the capacity to hit hegemons where it hurts, very visible in Ukraine and the Middle East now. This leads to instability only temporarily until you end up in a new equilibrium where smaller players will have significantly more say and capacity to retaliate, effectively a MAD strategy on a budget for everyone.
- carabiner 7mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41305736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41305736 No idea why a story about a YC company was flagged.
- londons_explore 7mo agoThe future of almost all industries is smart software (costing billions to make, but infinitely copyable) and cheap hardware.
- givemeethekeys 7mo agoPerhaps this will be a larger peace between hypersonic powers than the one we've had between nuclear powers.
- m000 7mo agoNuclear weapons gave us global stability (i.e. no WW3). Hypersonics, hopefully, will also give us regional stability.
- belter 7mo ago[dead]
- blipvert 7mo agoIf it’s not five nines then I’m not interested.
- LorenPechtel 7mo agoHypersonic has a big weakness--good luck building a seeker that can function hypersonic. And most of that flight will be effectively outside the atmosphere--no midcourse adjustments. If you're standing still that's irrelevant, but if you can move that's a big issue. And how many Chinesium rocket motors will explode on ignition, blowing up whatever is doing the shooting.
- vfclists 7mo agoWhat is its weight, what is its payload and what is the cost of the fuel needed to propel it to hypersonic speeds?
- yanhangyhy 7mo agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1p64kki/reporter_in_china_exposes_illegal_aircraft/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1p64kki/reporter_... It reminds me of a funny piece of news. A noodle manufacturer in China, for some reason—maybe to make more money—secretly produced quite a number of small aircraft and even managed to sell many of them.
- mikrotikker 7mo agoWill this be like the time that Saudi Arabia bought a Chinese laser defense system to stop drone attacks on its oil infra only for it to be incredible ineffective?
- GuB-42 7mo ago$99,000 sounds like an ad for a car. How much is the deluxe warhead option? Is it available under leasing? (insurance may be expensive) I have a hard time believing that the price is anything but marketing. Statistically, $99,000 is just a number that is as likely as any other number, but still...
- maxglute 7mo agoIn terms of credibility, this is the same group / private company that claimed the ramject rotating detonation engine last year. They're the only private PRC aerospace company that works on hypersonic technology, they've been around for 10+ years, have national little giant designation, IIRC the founder was chief designer at CALT/CASC, most of the R&D teams seems seasoned. That said I cannot tell if they're PRC's very budget Anduril, their PR is pretty flash (at least relative to PRC standards) but they have a lot of ambitious vapor ware tier projects / announcements in prior years. It doesn't seem like they ever really had the $$$ to do anything grandiose, but they got like 200m rmb in investment right before YKJ-1000 announcement... Considering PRC acquisition of 1m drones + 1m loitering munitions, maybe sign pivot to budget hypersonic viable business model than commercial space. Other related relevant info, there was interview according (allegedly) to source within company the the 100k USD / 700k rmb unit price is apparently calculated by outsiders, so it is not reliable. But the more interesting tidbit is the goal of "manufacturing rockets like manufacturing cars" is to drive down costs of missiles to 1/10th price of "traditional" costs, with cited costs of "often in 10s of millions" of rmb per unit. Often as in not always, hinting lower end, i.e. 10-40 million rmb, and I assume in same S/IRBM tier, suggesting those tier missiles are currently in 1m-5m usd range. Likely not higher, i.e. 50-100 rmb range, otherwise linguistically, language would round unit up to 100m (亿).
- dmvjs 7mo ago$99,000 is the new 99 cents