China has exhibited its new hypersonic ‘ship killer’. Here’s my take as a Navy missile man

 This past week, there was a massive military parade in Beijing. Front and centre, certainly from my perspective, was the unveiling of the YJ-17 hypersonic anti-ship missile, already being dubbed “the ship killer”.

I thought it would be useful to look at what this missile means to us and allied navies and how we might defend against it, and in so doing, scotch some of the hyperbole that surrounds it.

First off, the term “ship killer” isn’t helpful. Almost every weapon in Navy terms is a ship killer: heavyweight torpedoes, ship-to-ship missiles and their shore based cousins, air-to-surface missiles, even a ship’s main gun on a good day – these are all “ship killers” – that’s kind of the point. Historically none of these have rendered ships dead on arrival, but for some reason, whenever China gets a new missile these days people leap to the conclusion that surface warships are now obsolete. 

It’s peculiar because everyone has had heavyweight torpedoes for ages and they’re much more dangerous. In the case of a heavyweight torpedo, the likelihood of an adversary firing one at you without you knowing about it, the difficulty of defeating it once fired, the likelihood of it actually hitting you and the damage sustained if it does all favour the attacker more than in the case of a missile, no matter how fast.

Torpedoes have been in use since January 14, 1878, during the Russo-Turkish War. On that occasion the Russian Navy used a self-propelled Whitehead torpedo, launched from a torpedo boat, to sink the Ottoman ship Intibakh in the Black Sea near Batumi. No one between then and now has suggested that torpedoes have rendered warships obsolete. Even the U-boat wolfpacks’ “happy time”, as they sickeningly called their early rampages through allied shipping, didn’t cause warships to stop operating. Quite the opposite; it drove counter tactics and innovation that ultimately reversed their fortunes. 

Let’s run through the four elements in the firing chain outlined above.

First, missiles fired from both land and sea are often trackable even before they are fired. It isn’t always easy and neither is hitting the launch platform – as the Houthis have shown – but it is possible. Intelligence communities, spy satellites and any number of emissions intercept capabilities all give notice. Shooting the archer, not the arrow, is always the better way around if the Rules of Engagement permit it.

Second, missiles can be defeated after they are fired. At Mach 5 or above – one of the definitions of ‘Hypersonic’ – reaction times will be short. If you are 100 nautical miles from the launch site of a YJ-15 and it can achieve the manufacturer’s claimed speed of Mach 8 (these figures are always inflated) then you have one minute and eight seconds before it hits you, rather less if you want to fire something back to intercept it at a safe distance. This is not good, but no worse than the US, UK and other ships managed whilst sitting in the Houthi missile envelope in the Southern Red Sea for months on end. Remaining at that level of readiness is not much fun but it can be done. A fundamental of maritime warfare is that if geography and your weapons systems allow you the option of range, then take it. 

It’s also important to remember that missiles travelling at hypersonic speed generate a plasma cone around themselves. This means they can’t communicate or use sensors, which means they can’t strike a target with any accuracy and they can’t hit a moving target like a ship at all. This is why it appears to be the case that Russian hypersonics used in Ukraine slow down as they approach the target area – meaning that they are easier to hit. US Patriot interceptors have already had a number of successes against two of Putin’s supposedly unstoppable hypersonic “super weapons”, the Kinzhal and the Zircon.

It is generally accepted that variants of the Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), the US Navy’s latest interceptor, are more capable than the Patriot. The accompanying SM-3 has been proven against faster, higher ballistic targets. We can’t do these things yet in the UK, but upgrades to our Type 45 destroyer’s Sampson radar and Aster missile system will improve their performance against ballistic missiles over time. HMS Diamond already had some success against the lower end of this category in the Red Sea. How far up that continuum this will take us is unknown and at this stage and probably unknowable. I do know that the work needs to be accelerated.

Interestingly, both classes of Royal Navy frigate currently in build will be fitted with the Mk 41 vertical launch tube that can take the full range of Standard missiles, including the SM-6, so in the future, you could end up with our anti-submarine frigates being more capable against very fast missiles than our destroyers are – but let’s see how that plays out. The point is, intercepting in flight at this speed is hard but doable and getting easier. 

By the way, lasers are something of a distraction here. If you hit a high speed incoming missile at the sort of ranges our developing Dragon Fire laser will achieve, there’s a chance that you will just be hit by lots of smaller missiles. Lasers are still part of the jigsaw, but not a key one in this case. “Soft kill” is more likely to work, i.e. something that defeats their internal targeting or navigation system. Missile-on-missile grabs the headlines, but often this sort of defensive measure has a higher kill probability. 

Third, the missile has to know roughly where you are, and where you will be, before it can even be launched. When it arrives in the area it must lock onto you exactly or it will still miss. That sounds obvious but in the case of a moving, faraway target like a ship, neither task is simple. Something has to provide both the firing unit and the missile with time-sensitive tracking information. The wealth of OSINT accounts and commercially available satellite information makes this seem easy, but it isn’t. Many Houthi missiles and drones are essentially fired off at random into the blue to see what they may find. Plus, many of these observation measures are defeatable too, by both active and passive measures.

But let’s say they know exactly where you are and your current course and speed. At some point the missile will need an update because any commander worth his salt will not be doing a steady course and speed in this environment. This is a critical vulnerability of the hypersonic missile because, back to the plasma cone, the missile has to slow down for that information to reach it, or for it to use sensors to find out for itself. At this point, the missile can be shot down, spoofed, jammed or deceived. 

Finally, what happens if all of this aligns and the missile hits you. Well clearly that’s bad but if I was at sea in something large like a carrier, I would still rather be hit by one of these above the waterline than a torpedo just below the keel. The missile will cause damage, fires and destruction, but that can often be dealt with well enough for the ship to fight on, or at least survive to make port for repairs. A ship with a broken back is done for. 

All of which is to say, our warships are no more obsolete now than in 1878. The fact is, Russia has been building lethal “ship killers” since the 70s. One of the older ones was even codenamed “Shipwreck” by Nato, and there were many better than that followed. The SS-N-22 “Sunburn” was massive, travelled at Mach 3 and weaved at the end specifically to defeat our defense systems. I practiced against it in the simulator so often I can still tell you what our relative course, speed and range to deploy decoys and counter fire was. I won’t do that or I’ll get in trouble, but the point is we trained non-stop to defeat this and other such weapons and it never stopped us operating where we needed to. And that was with the Sea Dart interceptor missile, which compared to modern weapons, was – how do I say this – rubbish.

For context the Houthis have shot over 276 missiles at ships since October 2023 – mostly slow, defenceless merchant ships. Of those 45 caused damage, and two ships were sunk. That’s a 17 per cent hit rate – zero percent against warships. OK, this is the Houthis not the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Forces, but the point stands: firing missiles at ships is hard, particularly when they’re firing back. It is not the turkey shoot that Hollywood, the online debate or the case of the Russian cruiser Moskva would suggest. 

These weapons are an iteration not a revolution. On balance, I would say that defensively we are lagging, but only just, and corrections are happening. Offensively, in the UK, we are miles behind, but that is a story for another day. And of course they’re “ship killers”, that’s the whole point – it’s just not that easy to actually do.