China carried out a sixth flight test of its new high-speed nuclear attack vehicle on Monday designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses or carry out global strikes.
The ultra-fast maneuvering strike weapon known as the DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle was launched atop a ballistic missile fired from the Wuzhai missile test center in central China’s Shanxi Province, according defense officials.
The vehicle separated from its launcher near the edge of the atmosphere and then glided to an impact range several thousand miles away in western China, said officials familiar with details of the test.
The DF-ZF flight was tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies and flew at speeds beyond Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.
Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban declined to comment. “We do not comment on specific PRC weapons tests, but we do monitor Chinese military modernization carefully,” Urban told the Washington Free Beacon.
It was the sixth time the hypersonic glider has been flight tested since last year.
