Chinese Missiles

The PLA names its missiles by mission: each two-letter pinyin prefix is a family, numbered roughly in order of development. Western intelligence assigns its own designations — the older CSS series and the current CH-xx scheme used in US DoD reporting, where the letters encode launch platform and target (SS = surface-to-surface, SA = surface-to-air, AA = air-to-air, and an N marks naval launch). Export versions get a third, sanitized name.

One lane per family — the man-portable QW systems share the air-defense lane — and one dot per missile entering service. The pattern is the story: Soviet copies until the Sino-Soviet split, a thin indigenous output through the 1980s, then an unmistakable acceleration after 2000 — and a cluster of long-range, hypersonic and beyond-visual-range weapons since 2015.

The Dongfeng line began as a reverse-engineered Soviet R-2 and matured through four liquid-fueled designs into the DF-5 intercontinental missile. The solid-fuel revolution came from the sea: the JL-1 submarine missile was landed as the road-mobile DF-21, whose descendants include the DF-21D anti-ship variant and the DF-26. A second solid line, DF-31 to DF-41, carries the strategic deterrent, while the DF-17 and DF-27 mount hypersonic glide vehicles.

The CJ-10 gave the PLA its first long-range land-attack cruise missile, fielded by ground launch brigades and, as the CJ-20 (KD-20), by H-6 bombers. The follow-on CJ-100 is credited with supersonic speed at similar reach.

The YJ family grew from the Exocet-class YJ-8 of the 1980s — sold abroad as the C-801 and C-802, the names under which most of the world met it. The modern generation splits into the supersonic YJ-12 for saturation attacks and the YJ-18, which cruises subsonic and sprints supersonic in its terminal phase. Note the naming trap: C-numbers are export labels, not a separate family.

Chinese air defense started with the Soviet SA-2 — first copied as the HQ-1, then improved without Soviet help into the HQ-2, the family name every later system inherited. The HQ-9 is the long-range backbone in the S-300 class; the HQ-16 came out of cooperation with Russia on the Shtil line; the HQ-19 reaches into exo-atmospheric interception. KS, LY and QW numbers are export or man-portable offshoots.

From a copied Soviet K-13 to a 400 km beyond-visual-range weapon in five generations: the PL line tracked the fighter fleet it arms. The PL-12 brought the first active-radar seeker, the PL-10 a modern imaging-infrared dogfight missile, and the PL-15 and PL-17 now define the long-range air combat threat US planners size against.

The HJ-8 is the TOW-class wire-guided workhorse, exported widely; the HJ-12 is its fire-and-forget successor in the Javelin class.