China Releases Test Footage of Ballistic Missile Defense System (mirror.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mirror.co.uk: China has released footage of its first interception test of a mid-air ballistic missile, destroying a target miles above Earth. Footage of the experiment, which took place in 2010, has never been made public until now. According to Chinese news agency CCTV, Xu Chunguang, an expert working at a military base in northwest China, said: "All of our research is meant to solve problems that may crop up in future actual combats." It reportedly took researchers another three years to develop the core technologies to improve the system. A second successful test was reportedly conducted in January 2013. China's decision to finally release the footage could be seen as a warning shot to the U.S., which was critical of China for not notifying the Pentagon of the tests at the time. In May, China announced it would send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Atlantic Ocean, arguing it had little choice if America continued to advance its weapons systems. China has recently denounced South Korea's decision to deploy a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter threats from North Korea, saying that it harmed the foundation of their mutual trust.

Comments

Looks fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Really fake

Meme

[johnsnails]

I don't always click on the linked articles, but when I do they look fake AF.

LOL

[Archfeld]

I really enjoyed the comment about it harming our basis of mutual trust. The implication being that we 'trust' they are violating every agreement and treaty they've ever participated in and that they 'trust' we are spying on their every move ?

Re:China has had nuke carry subs in atlantic for 6

[khallow]

and unseen by the west, via the new DEEP canal.

It's not deep enough for that. Sorry, one doesn't sneak a sub through a canal with satellite and human int coverage.

ABM systems equal escalation?

[harperska]

I never understood that logic. We can have enough missiles pointed at you to turn all of your major cities into slag, but the moment you put up a system that would protect yourself from those missiles, hoo boy!

Re:ABM systems equal escalation?

[Richard_at_work]

The protection system shifts the threat considerably, because it means the country with it no longer suffers the same threat as the country without it - the concept of mutually assured destruction counts on the destruction of both parties being mutually assured (funny that...), and a protection system means it is no longer mutually assured, one party has a much better chance of coming out with significantly less destruction than the other.

Think of it this way - you and your worst enemy both have guns pointing at each other from a distance of 50 paces. You both know there is enough time to fire back if the other one fires, and you also both know neither of you can move in time to not get hit. If both of you are sane, rational people, do either of you fire? No.

Now consider how that dynamic would change if your enemy put on a full body bullet proof suit of armour. All of a sudden it doesn't matter as much to him whether you fire or not, he is much more likely to survive than before - and he is also much more likely to survive than you are as you dont have his suit of armour.

Gets a little too uncomfortable, doesn't it?