China Fires Its YJ-20 Hypersonic Anti-Ship Missile From a Type 052D Destroyer

Video released on July 29, 2026 and attributed to the Chinese navy shows a YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship missile launching from the vertical launching system of a Type 052D destroyer, the first time the weapon has been publicly shown firing from anything other than China's largest surface combatant.

The footage, carried by the state broadcaster CCTV ahead of the People's Liberation Army's 99th anniversary on August 1, shows the missile ejected from a forward cell before its solid rocket motor ignites, a cold-launch sequence typical of Chinese naval VLS designs. No target engagement is shown.

Western assessments put the YJ-20 well above Mach 6 in cruise and approaching Mach 9 in its terminal dive, with range estimates ranging from more than 1,000 km to as much as 1,500 km. It is credited with either aero-ballistic maneuvering or boost-glide flight, both intended to complicate interception by shipborne air defenses. None of these figures has been independently verified, and China has published no performance data.

Official footage from late 2025 showed a finalization test of the YJ-20 fired from the Type 055 destroyer Wuxi, the first acknowledgment that a ship-launched variant existed at all. Fielding it on the Type 052D is the more consequential step, because of how many there are.

GMN inventory data records 35 Type 052D destroyers in People's Liberation Army Navy service against 10 Type 055s. The Type 052D displaces 7,500 tonnes with a 64-cell vertical launching system and has been commissioning since 2014; the Type 055 is a 13,000-tonne, 180-metre design that entered service in 2020 and is generally treated as a cruiser in Western reckoning. Moving the missile from one class to both takes the number of hulls that can carry it from ten to 45, on a line that is still running.

That distinction matters more than the raw performance claims. A weapon carried only by a handful of flagships can be tracked and, in principle, accounted for; one distributed across a numerous class has to be assumed present on any destroyer a task group encounters. If the assessed figures are close to accurate, the YJ-20 would rank among the fastest missiles in the world and would push China's anti-access envelope well past the first island chain from mobile launch positions rather than fixed coastal sites.

Type 052D construction continues, with later hulls built to a stretched variant with a longer flight deck. Neither the number of YJ-20 rounds produced nor the proportion of the fleet cleared to carry them is publicly known.