
What is China’s new hypersonic glide vehicle? The country appears to have combined orbiting nukes with long-range gliders IN AUGUST a Chinese “Long March” rocket streaked into space. That is hardly unusual; there were nearly three dozen such launches last year. But having begun to orbit the Earth, the rocket’s payload then swung back down, glided through the upper atmosphere and crashed into the ground, missing a target by about 40km. According to the Financial Times, which first reported the news, this was a test of a new, nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle. China has insisted that it merely conducted a “routine test of a space vehicle to verify technology of spacecraft's reusability”. Yet the demonstration reportedly stunned American officials. “We have no idea how they did this,” one of them told the newspaper. What are hypersonic gliders and why do they matter?Conventional intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) follow a parabolic trajectory, like...