China is touting a shape-shifting hypersonic missile as a leap in strike power — but the real test is whether the weapon’s engineering can outrun physics.
Last month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that Chinese military researchers have unveiled a prototype hypersonic “morphing” missile capable of altering its aerodynamic shape mid-flight, marking a potential breakthrough in high-speed weapons technology, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica.
Led by Professor Wang Peng of the National University of Defence Technology, the team released a rare photo and technical details of a vehicle equipped with retractable wings designed to reduce drag at speeds above Mach 5 and extend for greater lift and maneuverability.
The system uses advanced control algorithms to dynamically adjust wing deployment in real time, addressing longstanding challenges posed by extreme heat, structural stress and actuator lag at hypersonic velocities.
The disclosure follows China’s public display in September of the CJ-1000 hypersonic cruise missile (HCM), which it claims can strike mobile air and naval assets over long distances. However, that system’s inner design remains concealed.
But the question looming over China’s new “morphing” missile is whether shape-shifting wings can truly overcome the physics-driven limits that still leave hypersonic weapons trackable, stress-bound and vulnerable in the terminal phase.
According to the US Army’s OE Data Integration Network (ODIN) database, the CJ-1000 is China’s first scramjet-powered cruise missile, using an air-breathing jet engine that achieves hypersonic flight by burning fuel in a supersonic airflow maintained throughout the engine.
The database adds that the CJ-1000 flies at Mach 6 and has a maximum range of 6,000 kilometers, making it difficult to intercept. It notes that the missile’s primary mission appears to be engaging key nodes in an adversary’s defense network, such as command and control centers or key radar sites.
ODIN mentions that, in contrast to ballistic missiles that follow a predictable ballistic arc in their trajectory, HCMs such as the CJ-1000 fly at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere and can change course during flight, combining speed and maneuverability to defeat missile defense systems.
The US is pursuing parallel hypersonic and counter-hypersonic efforts, including the Glide Breaker interceptor and new space-tracking constellations meant to spot maneuvering weapons early in flight. While hypersonic weapons are touted for their ability to breach current missile defenses, that capability may be overstated.
David Wright and Cameron Tracy argue in a March 2024 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that although hypersonic weapons are often promoted as able to evade missile defenses by flying low and fast, they still generate bright infrared signatures visible to existing early-warning satellites, and can be detected at hundreds of kilometers by ground-based radars.
They state that this tracking, combined with the slowing effect of atmospheric drag, allows modern terminal defenses to engage them, meaning ships and high-value sites are not necessarily defenseless against hypersonic attack.
In line with that, Masao Dahlgren mentions in a December 2023 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report that they emit measurable but dimmer infrared signatures than booster plumes, making them harder to discriminate against Earth and space backgrounds and requiring advanced processing to extract motion from noisy pixels.
Dahlgren says space-based infrared satellite constellations can observe long sightlines and, if configured for stereo viewing and sufficient resolution, triangulate three-dimensional fire-control tracks. However, they face tradeoffs in field-of-view, pixel footprint, motion blur and solar exclusion that can reduce detectability.
In addition, he says that airborne sensors flying below the weapon can see hot bodies against a cold sky and thus materially improve regional detectability and tracking.
Furthermore, Wright and Tracy state in a September 2023 article that current US long-range exo-atmospheric missile defenses, such as the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) and SM-3, cannot engage hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (BGVs) once they descend below roughly 100 kilometers altitude.
However, they point out that Patriot PAC-3 MSE could potentially intercept BGVs if they decelerate to around Mach 6 during the dive. To avoid this, they note BGVs must maintain speeds above about Mach 6 through terminal descent, requiring approximately Mach 10 at the start of the dive—implying initial glide speeds near Mach 13 for a ~1,000 kilometer glide.
Adding to Wright and Tracy’s points, Lieutenant Colonel Andreas Schmidt mentions in a 2024 article for Space & Missile Defense that both hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) and HCMs are likely to slow to below Mach 5 in the terminal phase to maintain accuracy, with ramjets pushing cruise systems only slightly above Mach 6.
Still, he stresses that hypersonic engines are susceptible to disruption under substantial maneuver loads and that current airframes may not sustain maneuvers beyond ~10 G, making aggressive terminal evasive actions unlikely. Schmidt adds that HCMs decelerate below Mach 5 due to drag and engine shutdown in denser air.
Comparing HCMs to HGVs, Wright and Tracy argue in a 2024 Science & Global Security article that HCMs sustain powered atmospheric flight, giving them lower-cost maneuvering than HGVs since smaller forces are needed to turn at reduced dynamic pressure.
However, they point out that this aerodynamic advantage sits within a tightly constrained flight regime, where maintaining constant dynamic pressure requires coordinated control of angle-of-attack, altitude and fuel flow, limiting aggressive turns and end-game evasiveness.
They also note that maneuverable reentry vehicles (MARVs), including those launched on depressed ballistic trajectories, can be lighter and faster than HCMs and may outperform them for many strike roles.
Given those caveats, China’s prototype “morphing” hypersonic missile appears aimed at refining, rather than transcending, known hypersonic tradeoffs.
While retractable wings promise improved lift-to-drag management and route flexibility, air-breathing systems still confront structural and thermal limits that constrain maneuvering, sensor-evading agility and terminal-phase energy.
The effort, therefore, signals incremental optimization of endurance and control authority, not a breakthrough eliminating detection exposure or terminal interception vulnerability. Beneath the hype and hardware, China’s morphing missile isn’t rewriting hypersonics — it’s wrestling with the same physics everyone else must beat.
