Origin of Chinese HGV WU-14 Warhead

It was said that foreign media reported WU-14, a new Chinese hypersonic weapon speculated, had been tested 10 times the speed of sound super weapon by Chinese military on Jan. 9, 2014, whose purpose is to break the U.S. missile defense system.

The U.S. military named the testing object for hypersonic glide vehicle(HGV) missile WU-14.

Type: HGV missile warhead

Flight speed: 5~10 Mach.

Main applications: Attracting the large warships, the main objectives of ground, or the air strategic objectives.

With the respect to the origin of name Chinese HGV WU-14, there are several explanations: 1) WU refers to Chinese missile base in Wuzhai Shanxi Province, and the word WU pronounces the same as the first Chinese character WU. 2) It is one type of strategic weapons symbols the great national rejuvenation of Chinese, and also should be one of the world’s leading weapon systems for re-emergence. The word Wu pronounces the same as the first Chinese character for weapon. 3) It is a type of strategic weapon of hypersonic weapon systems need to withstanding the high temperature of several thousand degrees while re-entering the atmosphere, which will be unbearable for other material. Therefore, experts from Chinatungsten Online analyzed that that material with a high temperature resistance property may be tungsten alloy material while re-entering the atmosphere. The word WU also pronounces the same as the first Chinese character for tungsten alloy, and also it has the special properties of tungsten: i) The main properties for tungsten alloy adding with a certain of material such as rare earth, molybdenum, manganese will be high strength, high temperature resistance, and ii) another main property of tungsten is high density, tungsten alloy has huge destructive power to re-enter the atmosphere with its superior ultimate tensile strength after special processing of swaging and forging, meanwhile, the high density ensures it produces significantly penetrating to go through the atmosphere in hypersonic and penetrate all the missile defense systems, so as to produce the absolutely destructive power to its located targets. So the experts from Chinatungsten Online suppose it primarily named because of tungsten factor in that Chinese HGV WU-14 Warhead weapon system.

The serial number 14 is the first trail year of that type HGV, which is year 2014. Chinese military had confirmed that a new hypersonic aircraft of the third test, but did not disclose its code name on Dec. 10, 2014. Chinese National Defense Ministry spokesman responded: “It is normal to process scientific researches and experiments in the territory of China in accordance with the schedule, which aims at any particular country or target.”

Anyway, it was just a speculation and analysis from the professional field but not an official statement.

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