China tested dropping hypersonic missiles from balloons in 2018: Report
By jdheyes // 2023-02-09
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While Democrats and the politicized intelligence and defense agencies all claim that the Chinese spy balloon President Biden allowed to traverse the entirety of our nation before a token shoot-down over the Atlantic did not pose any threat to Americans, a report published earlier this week begs to differ. According to The Epoch Times, in 2018 the Chinese military tested launching hypersonic missiles that travel many times faster than the speed of sound from balloon platforms, proving again that Democrats who are defending Biden's inaction are dangerous liars. Chinese state-owned television actually aired footage of the test launch at the time. "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," the report said. "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," the outlet added. One 2018 Twitter post shows an operation involving the Chinese rapidly inflating a balloon and launching it skyward carrying the three-vehicle payload. The Epoch Times added: 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. At present, the United States does not have an operational hypersonic missile system while China has successfully tested its own version, as has Russia. In fact, Russia supposedly has fielded a hypersonic missile system which is extremely problematic given that the U.S. and NATO are risking war with Moscow by supplying Ukraine with sophisticated weapons that are killing Russian soldiers by the thousands. The Chinese operation to drop the HGVs from a balloon were part of efforts to develop and deploy precision warheads that could be placed atop hypersonic missiles. That will give the Chinese military an "unstoppable nuclear-capable weapon," according to a report in the South China Morning Post. Paul Crespo, who heads up the Center for American Defense Studies, said the balloon that Biden allowed to cross the country "absolutely" could be a dry run for balloon-launched weapon, though hypersonic missiles most likely would not be China's first-choice weapon. “While China has tested hypersonic missiles launched from balloons in the past, that isn’t a likely use for these airships,” Crespo told The Epoch Times via email. “The biggest threat is sending one or more of these high altitude balloons over the U.S. with a small nuclear EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) device.” “Detonated at extremely high altitude, they could knock out power and communications across the US, wreaking widespread havoc for a year or more without firing a shot on the ground," the defense expert added. The Chinese spy balloon sparked interest in a 2013 presentation featuring a former CIA director in which he and other experts discussed the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event that would wreak havoc on the country. “On July 29th, 2013 in Washington D.C., President Bill Clinton’s former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, led a panel discussion on the growing — and perhaps imminent — threat of a natural or nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to the U.S. electric grid and other critical infrastructures that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions of Americans,” noted Infowars in a post featuring the video. In the video, the various experts discussed how a nuclear EMP attack could be carried out, and one of the possibilities was by stealth rather than a nuclear-tipped ICBM — and balloons are very stealthy. And late last week, the Washington Examiner reported that they could be used to ferry an EMP device over the U.S. to be detonated during a time of war, or possibly to start a war. Sources include: NaturalNews.com SCMP.com TheEpochTimes.com
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