China has moved its cutting-edge hypersonic drones to an air base in eastern China, the leaked Pentagon documents show, in what is being seen as yet another sign of Beijing’s readiness to launch an attack on Taiwan.
One of the documents, analyzed by The Washington Post, included satellite photos from August 9.
The imagery showed two WZ-8 rocket-propelled reconnaissance drones at an air base in eastern China, about 350 miles inland from Shanghai.
The August maneuvers of the WZ-8 were noted in a secret document from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
They show the Chinese military making technological advances that could help it target American warships around Taiwan and military bases in the region.
They also show the sophistication of Chinese military hardware.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency report says China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), had ‘almost certainly’ established its first unmanned aerial vehicle unit at the base.
The base falls under the Eastern Theater Command, the branch of the Chinese military responsible for enforcing Beijing’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan.
The revelation comes as Congress is due to be presented with a series of scenarios about potential attacks on Taiwan.
The House China Select Committee on Wednesday will take part in a war-game scenario for a simulated Chinese invasion of Taiwan, run by the Center for A New American Security.
The session has been planned to give lawmakers a sense of how a Taiwan conflict would unfold, where U.S. military weaknesses may lie, and the consequences for international trade and American businesses, Axios reported.
The WZ-8 was officially unveiled in December 2019, at the 70th-anniversary parade marking the founding of Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China.
The drone flies at high altitude, and travels at least three times the speed of sound.
Several other documents allegedly leaked by Jack Teixeira, who was arrested last week, show the existence of additional spy balloons, and an assessment that Taiwan is ill-prepared to withstand an aerial bombardment from China during an invasion.
The Department of Defense has not commented on the drone document.
The leaked files also include a deeply troubling report about China’s hypersonic missile program, and the revelation that a new missile believed to be capable of evading U.S. defenses has been successfully tested.
Teixeira, 21, was arrested on Thursday at his home in Massachusetts. He is believed to have shared hundreds of classified documents with friends on a Discord chat room between the fall and mid March.
Among them was a February 28 top-secret report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence directorate, The Washington Post reported.
They reported that three days previously, on February 25, China had successfully tested a new missile, named DF-27 – a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile, in the Dongfeng series. All Dongfeng-series missiles are capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
The missile ‘possesses a high probability of penetrating US’ ballistic missile defenses, the report said.
The February 28 memo also revealed that last year the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army, deployed versions of the new missile that can attack land targets and ships.
The new missile has a hypersonic glide vehicle, designed to fly more than five times the speed of sound.
They can maneuver in flight, making them almost impossible to shoot down.
The DF-27 flew for 12 minutes and traveled 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles), the leaked document revealed.
Its range is significantly more than that: a 2021 Defense Department report cited by The Washington Post said the DF-27 has a range of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers, meaning that it can strike any target in East or Southeast Asia and large parts of the Pacific, including Guam.
Alaska is around 7,200km away: mainland U.S. is under 11,000km away, according to the latest annual Pentagon analysis, ‘Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China’. The report was published in November and cited by Newsweek.
‘The DF-27 is designed to enhance [China’s] ability to hold targets at risk beyond the Second Island Chain and possesses a high probability of penetrating U.S.’ ballistic missile defense, the report stated.
The First, Second and Third Island Chains are geopolitical terms, first identified by U.S. military planners in the 1940s, for a series of concentric semicircles stretching out from China.
The Second Island Chain references the area stretching from central Japan through the Marianas and Micronesia.
The third is centered on Hawaii. The first is closer to China, and runs from the far south of Japan through the South China Sea.
China has long been known to be making rapid strides in its hypersonic missiles program.
The latest development, however, comes at a tense time, with rising fears about the safety of Taiwan.
