Foreign Media: China's 99,000 USD Hypersonic Missile Shocked the Global Defense Landscape

According to DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA, a website for Asian defense and security, on February 19, 2026: The emergence of a new weapon is causing a stir in the global defense community. A Chinese private aerospace company, Sichuan Lingkong Tianhang Technology Co., Ltd. (internationally known as Space Transportation), has launched the YKJ-1000 hypersonic glide missile. This system combines extreme speed, advanced maneuverability, and unprecedented cost-effectiveness, forming a new combat platform.

This release comes at a time of rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific region, intensifying Sino-US strategic competition, and accelerated military deployments in Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and the entire South China Sea area.

According to promotional materials, the YKJ-1000 can reach a top speed of 7 Mach, approximately 8,575 km/h, and can carry out highly time-sensitive strikes on maritime and ground targets within a range of 500 to 1,300 kilometers.

The key reason for global discussion lies in its extremely low unit cost - the price per unit is approximately 99,000 USD, which is vastly different from Western interception missiles. For example, the U.S. Navy's Standard-6 (SM-6) costs 4.1 million USD each; while the single price of the THAAD interception missile ranges between 12 to 15 million USD.

This huge cost gap raises fundamental questions about future methods of military power projection, the sustainability of expensive missile defense systems, and the possibility for small countries or even non-state actors to obtain hypersonic strike capabilities at a fraction of traditional costs.

If the performance of this missile is accurate, the YKJ-1000 may lead to the "democratization" of hypersonic weapons and shake up the long-standing military theory landscape dominated by expensive Western and Russian precision strike systems.

This missile first appeared in late November 2025, immediately causing a strong reaction in Chinese official media; at the same time, Western analysts quickly expressed doubts, focusing on its strategic implications, feasibility of mass production, and whether it is truly a hypersonic glide vehicle.

The emergence of the YKJ-1000 coincides with China's increasing emphasis on the "military-civilian integration" development model - under this model, commercial supply chains, electronic industry, and large-scale manufacturing systems of the 21st century are deeply integrated with the development of next-generation weapons. As a representative, Lingkong Tianhang Technology Company is a product of this transformation.

The company was founded in 2018, headquartered in Chengdu, initially focused on reusable launch vehicles, suborbital transportation, and experimental space tourism - this development path is similar to that of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, but under China's broader strategic blueprint.

Under the leadership of Wang Yudong, the chairman of the company, a senior engineer in China's launch vehicle field, Lingkong Tianhang quickly entered the hypersonic field, significantly shortening the R&D cycle by leveraging private capital and the advantages of China's vast electronics industry.

Wang Yudong described the YKJ-1000 project as "standing on the shoulders of giants, absorbing the fruits of China's "Made in China" strategy, reflecting China's overall social productivity," and pointed out that its birth reflects a "systemic change" in R&D concepts, industrial organization, and supply chain optimization.

This development direction aligns with the key deployment of China's 14th Five-Year Plan on aerospace breakthroughs and military-civilian integration industries, also creating a historic opportunity for private enterprises to enter markets previously monopolized by state giants such as China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

As of 2025, the company has completed multiple tests of reusable rocket structures, laying the technical foundation for integrating the YKJ-1000 booster and hypersonic glide vehicle.

——YKJ-1000 Engineering Design: Speed, Maneuverability, and Strike Precision

The YKJ-1000 adopts a boost-glide hypersonic missile design, with a solid-fuel booster responsible for initial acceleration, and the gliding vehicle equipped with two additional engines to maintain powered flight during the hypersonic phase.

This structure allows the weapon to maintain powered flight for 360 seconds (about 6 minutes), enabling extensive mid-course maneuvering and unpredictable trajectory adjustments, thus significantly increasing the difficulty of interception.

The missile's range varies depending on configuration, ranging from 500 km to 1300 km, covering key Indo-Pacific hotspots such as the Taiwan Strait, Okinawa, the South China Sea, the Luzon Strait, and major U.S. military bases.

Different from traditional ballistic missiles flying along predictable trajectories, the YKJ-1000 has high dynamic maneuverability during the gliding phase, allowing for height changes, lateral displacement, and sharp turns, thereby interfering with the tracking and interception algorithms of missile defense radars.

Its main tactical features include autonomous target recognition, terminal maneuvering to avoid, and onboard threat avoidance logic, capable of precisely striking high-value targets such as aircraft carrier strike groups, "Aegis" destroyers, command and control centers, hardened airbases, and long-range radar networks.

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Original article: toutiao.com/article/1857529857455370/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.