Reuters reports:

The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, has provided the first official U.S. confirmation of a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses.

The Pentagon has been at pains to avoid direct confirmation of the Chinese test this summer, first reported by the Financial Times, even as President Joe Biden and other officials have expressed general concerns about Chinese hypersonic weapons development.

But Milley explicitly confirmed a test and said that it was “very close” to a Sputnik moment — referring Russia’s 1957 launch of the first man-made satellite, which put Moscow ahead in the Cold War-era space race. [Continue reading…]

Jonathan Marcus writes:

Twice in the summer, the Chinese military launched a rocket into space that circled the globe before speeding towards its target.

On the first occasion, it missed its target by about 24 miles (40 km), according to people briefed on the intelligence speaking to the Financial Times, which broke the story.

While some US politicians and commentators were alarmed at China’s apparent progress, Beijing was quick to deny the report, insisting that this was in fact the test of a re-usable spacecraft.

China’s denial is “an act of obfuscation” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, because the story has been confirmed by US officials speaking to other media.

And he finds the claim that China tested an orbital bombardment system [FOB] both “technically plausible and strategically reasonable for Beijing”. [Continue reading…]