China claims it has beaten the United States to developing heat-seeking hypersonic missiles that could hone in on targets including aircraft carriers and moving vehicles.
The development, which is likely to add intensity to the ongoing arms race between China, the US and Russia, comes after Beijing denied testing a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August.
The projectile, which circled the planet, sparked concerns among officials in the US, but China insisted the missile launch was for a spacecraft.
However, now researchers from China's National University of Defence Technology claim to have developed technology to allow a hypersonic missile to find a target based on its heat signature.
According to research cited by the South China Morning Post, lead scientist Professor Yi Shihe claimed in a scientific paper published last month that China had made a 'series of core technology breakthroughs that were proven effective in tests'.
If true, it means China may have overcome the difficulty of developing a heat-seeking system which capable of of working at hypersonic speeds.
The feat is a challenge because the pace of the missile itself generates heat which can interfere with the detection systems.
Hypersonic missiles can reach speeds of up to 21,000mph and can strike anywhere on Earth from space within minutes.
The latest development comes amid experts' fears that hypersonic missiles could be used to spark World War Three, with Russia, China and the US all working on next-generation missiles.
The hypersonic orbital bombardment system that China tested in August reportedly reaches a top speed of 21,000 mph and strikes from space.
The core concept of China's 'new' weapon - deliver a warhead into orbit and have it circle the globe before hitting a target - was first developed by the Soviets in the 1960s.
Called a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, or FOBS, it was developed to evade powerful US radar arrays and missile defence systems.
Those systems work by detecting launches of ICBMs - very long-range missiles that can be tipped with nukes - and tracking them into space, then firing at the warheads as they come down in the hope of blowing them up before they hit their targets.
This is possible because ICBMs and their warheads follow a predictable trajectory that rises high into space - making them relatively easy to spot and allowing defence crews to calculate where they are aimed so they can be shot out of the sky.
FOBS aim to negate these defences by firing their warheads along a much-flatter trajectory - assisted by Earth's gravity.
This means they pass under the scope of many radar detection arrays and are harder to track. It also makes the warheads much harder to shoot down because their trajectory is harder to calculate.
The use of orbit makes a warhead's range potentially unlimited, meaning it can be fired at its target from any direction. This helps to avoid radar systems which generally point at a fixed spot in the sky - in America's case, over the North Pole.
Meanwhile, China has also unveiled a hypersonic medium-range missile, the DF-17, in 2019, which can travel around 2,000 kilometres and can carry nuclear warheads.
In October, China deployed the DF 17 missile to coastal areas in preparation for a possible invasion of Taiwan.
The weapon has a maximum range of 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) and is capable of achieving speeds of up to 7,680 miles per hour (12,360 kph) - or 10 times the speed of sound - while carrying a nuclear warhead, according to previous reports.
It has been billed as 'a death sentence' to aircraft carriers within its range.
It has been billed as 'a death sentence' to aircraft carriers within its range.
Hypersonic missiles travel at more than five times the speed of sound in the upper atmosphere - or about 6,200 km per hour (3,850 mph). This is slower than an intercontinental ballistic missile, but the shape of a hypersonic glide vehicle allows it to manoeuvre toward a target or away from defences.
Combining a glide vehicle with a missile that can launch it partially into orbit - a so-called fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) - could strip adversaries of reaction time and traditional defences mechanisms.
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