Chinese scientists have claimed to be able to make more discoveries than their American counterpart in developing supersonic aircraft thanks to better equipment.
A secretive £5 million hypersonic wind tunnel, nicknamed ‘Hyper Dragon’, is helping the experts ‘reveal many facts that Americans have not found out’, one Chinese researcher said in a propaganda documentary.
The programme also revealed that Chinese scientists are developing a commercial plane that could connect Beijing and New York in just two hours.
China’s state TV revealed a clip of the secretive JF12 hypersonic wind tunnel (pictured)
The device, in Beijing, can blow gusts of wind travelling as fast as 10 times the speed of sound
Shrouded in secrecy, the JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind tunnel was completed in May, 2012, but has rarely been captured by media.
China Central Television, the state broadcaster, showed a glimpse of the mysterious equipment in a documentary on October 8.
Built by Chinese Academy of Science with 46 million Yuan (£5 million), the 2.5-metre-wide (8.2 feet), 265-metre-long (869 feet) tunnel is said to be able to blow gusts of wind as fast as 10 times the speed of sound.
The temperature of the gusts could reach a staggering 3,000 degrees Celsius.
Jiang Zonglin, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Science, called the ‘unprecedented’ wind tunnel an incubator of advanced aircraft.
Mr Jiang said because planes couldn’t fly during a lab experiment, they would need a wind tunnel that could generate gusts as fast as the desired speed of the aircraft to simulate a flying environment.
In the case of JF12, it could simulate flying conditions between Mach 5 and Mach 9.
The footage also shows a triangle supersonic aircraft being tested in the advanced wind tunnel
A researcher said the tunnel can help them ‘reveal facts that Americans have not found out’
Mr Jiang claimed that he and his team carry out one experiment every two days, and each experiment last 100 millisecond, which equals to one-tenth of a second.
The researchers pointed out that China is currently developing a supersonic commercial plane that could travel as quickly as five times the speed of sound.
This means the aircraft would be able to fly from Beijing to New York in two hours, compared to the current 14 hours.
The TV clip apparently also shows an arrowhead-shaped model inside the Beijing-based wind tunnel.
Its design looks like official Chinese mock-ups of the DF-ZF, China’s 7,680mph hypersonic strike aircraft that could carry nuclear warheads past US missile defenses.
Chinese officials have confirmed several test flights of hypersonic glide vehicles since 2013, but have kept the details top secret.
This is likely the first time China has shown any test models linked to the project.
Another supersonic aircraft apparently being developed by China has been shown in the video
Chinese state media has revealed the country’s first ever images of a model (pictured) of its hypersonic glide vehicle, a nuclear weapons expert has claimed. The secretive missile delivery craft, known as the DF-ZF, could travel at up to ten times the speed of sound
The hypersonic strike aircraft is getting ready to be launched into the 265-metre-long tunnel
In addition, The broadcast showed a weapon with a shape similar to the last stage of a ballistic missile, and computer generated images of a new triangular-framed glider.
Raymond Wang, an expert in stopping the international spread of nuclear weapons, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, was one of the first to spot the DF-ZF model.
Writing on Twitter, he noted the programme’s narrator didn’t specifically refer to hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (HBGVs) or the DF-ZF at any point.
Raymond Wang, an expert in stopping the international spread of nuclear weapons from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, was one of the first to spot the DF-ZF model
‘China just showed its hypersonic-BGV in a vid on 08 Oct. Probably a test design model, but AFAIK [as far as I know] this is first pics of an actual object,’ he wrote.
‘Vid is about JF-12 hypersonic testing tunnel. Narrator never explicitly says its HBGV. Resembles mock-ups of WU-14.
‘Not an expert, cannot tell if useful info. BUT WATCHING PROPAGANDA IS IMPORTANT.’
Mr Wang said the wind tunnel shown in the clip has sharper angles than any known models of the Chinese design.