Chinese Start-Up Shows YKJ-1000 Hypersonic Missiles Targeting Japan in New Video
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A Chinese private aerospace firm has revealed the YKJ-1000, a container-launched hypersonic missile advertised with a range that covers key U.S. and Japanese bases. The system’s low production cost and its appearance in politically charged imagery raise new questions for regional deterrence.
On 25 November 2025, a Beijing-based private aerospace company, Lingkong Tianxing Technology, has unveiled the YKJ-1000 hypersonic missile in a test and promotional video that has already circulated widely on Chinese social media. The footage shows live firing from a desert range, and computer-generated strike sequences, including a final frame where a formation of missiles arcs toward a stylised map of Japan. Chinese media reports that the missile is already in mass production, with the company claiming costs at roughly one-tenth of traditional designs.Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link
China’s YKJ-1000 hypersonic missile combines boost glide design, speeds up to Mach 7, and a 500-1,300 km range, using autonomous guidance and terminal manoeuvres to evade interception from containerised road mobile launchers (Picture source: Lingkong Tianxing Technology).
The YKJ-1000 is presented as a boost glide system, sitting in the now familiar family of hypersonic weapons that combine a solid booster with a manoeuvring glide vehicle. According to the developer, the missile offers an operational range between 500 and 1,300 kilometres, a sustained speed band from Mach 5 to Mach 7, and around 360 seconds of powered cruise before transitioning fully to glide. Its airframe carries a glider segment fitted with an additional rocket engine, allowing powered manoeuvres deep into flight rather than a simple ballistic coast. The launch package is mounted in a truck-borne system disguised as a standard shipping container, complete with deployable corner stabilisers, a configuration that allows peacetime concealment in commercial traffic and wartime dispersal on ordinary road networks. Lingkong Tianxing tells Chinese media that this architecture, paired with simplified materials and manufacturing, delivers roughly a 90% cost reduction compared with legacy missiles, and that the baseline version has already entered series production.
Guidance and onboard intelligence are at the heart of the concept. The Global Times report stresses that once launched, the YKJ-1000 can automatically identify targets and execute autonomous evasive manoeuvres against interception attempts before striking. Company statements add that the weapon is equipped with high-resolution sensors that allow it to perform very rapid reconnaissance runs as well as precision attack, exploiting its speed to sprint in, collect targeting data, and withdraw. Lingkong Tianxing further highlights work on an “intelligent version” that will integrate artificial intelligence-based decision-making and swarm collaboration, allowing multiple missiles to share information, coordinate approach vectors, and dynamically reassign targets in flight. In practical terms, that points toward multi-axis, saturation-style attacks in which some vehicles act as decoys or sensors while others deliver the warheads, complicating the defender’s fire control picture.
The missile’s range bracket is built for the geography of the Western Pacific. From likely launch corridors along the Fujian and Zhejiang coasts, the upper end of 1,300 kilometres comfortably covers Okinawa, Kyushu, and key US and Japanese facilities such as Kadena, Naha, Sasebo, and Iwakuni, as well as most of Taiwan and the Ryukyu chain. Civil aviation distance data put the Fuzhou Okinawa leg at roughly 850 kilometres, well inside the envelope advertised by Lingkong Tianxing. At Mach 7, a shot across that span shrinks time to target into single-digit minutes, compressing warning and decision cycles for Japanese and U.S. commanders and giving missile defence crews very little space to classify, track, and engage. The boost glide profile, with a low, manoeuvring terminal trajectory, is explicitly designed to exploit seams between radar horizons and existing engagement envelopes, particularly for naval forces that rely on Aegis and Standard Missile layers optimised for more predictable ballistic or cruise paths.
The YKJ-1000 also needs to be read against China’s wider hypersonic portfolio. Systems such as the DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile with its DFZF glide vehicle have already given the PLA Rocket Force a theatre strike option out to roughly 1,800 to 2,500 kilometres, covering Guam from inland launch sites. The YJ-21, a hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile deployed on Type 055 destroyers and H6 bombers, is widely assessed to have a range of around 1,000 to 1,500 kilometres against carrier groups and large surface combatants. At the higher end, the CJ-1000 hypersonic cruise missile revealed earlier this year is described in Chinese state-linked reporting as an ultra-long range “plane killer” able to engage high-value airborne assets at distances of “thousands of kilometres”. In that context, the YKJ-1000 looks like a lower-cost, containerised theatre weapon, sitting below the strategic CJ-1000 and DF family in range but designed to be procured and fired in far greater numbers.
The Chinese firm Lingkong Tianxing is already known in commercial and space circles for its work on reusable launch vehicles and hypersonic spaceplanes for suborbital tourism and ultra-fast passenger travel, backed by venture funding and incorporated into China’s national research and production system. Its core team claims extensive participation in major hypersonic research projects, and Chinese reporting notes partnerships with state aerospace corporations and universities. In effect, the technology base developed for reusable rockets and future spaceplanes is being leveraged into tactical missiles. If the promised cost reductions are close to reality, the YKJ-1000 signals a move away from hypersonics as boutique assets toward salvo-capable munitions that can be fielded and used at scale.
The cinematic closing shot of eight YKJ-1000s flying toward Japan is therefore more than simple bravado. South China Morning Post coverage underlines that the animation explicitly shows the formation heading for the Japanese archipelago, at a moment when Tokyo is rewriting its defence strategy, investing in counter strike missiles and aligning even more closely with Washington on Taiwan and the East China Sea. Chinese state media and social platforms have amplified the clip, and open source analysts have treated it as a deliberate signal that Japanese cities and bases now sit under a very short-notice hypersonic shadow. The image neatly binds technical reality to political messaging: a missile whose range bracket overlays Japanese territory is shown, for domestic and foreign audiences alike, doing exactly that.
For the United States and its allies, the YKJ-1000 arrives as they are still trying to build the architecture needed to defend against weapons of this class. Washington and Tokyo are investing in space-based tracking constellations to follow hypersonic glide vehicles and in a joint Glide Phase Interceptor intended to engage such threats in the upper atmosphere, but those systems will not be fully operational for years. At the same time, key aspects of the YKJ-1000 remain unverified in open sources: warhead type and payload are undisclosed, no independent data confirms its accuracy, and there is not yet clear evidence of formal PLA Rocket Force or Navy integration. Nevertheless, from a capability development standpoint, China is clearly signalling three audiences. To its own public, that private firms can lead in frontier defence technology. To regional neighbours, especially Japan, that any crisis around Taiwan or the East China Sea will unfold under the credible threat of fast, precise strikes on their homeland. And to the United States, that countering Chinese hypersonic salvos will require not only interceptors, but a fundamental rethink of basing, dispersal, and resilience along the first and second island chains.
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A Chinese private aerospace firm has revealed the YKJ-1000, a container-launched hypersonic missile advertised with a range that covers key U.S. and Japanese bases. The system’s low production cost and its appearance in politically charged imagery raise new questions for regional deterrence.
On 25 November 2025, a Beijing-based private aerospace company, Lingkong Tianxing Technology, has unveiled the YKJ-1000 hypersonic missile in a test and promotional video that has already circulated widely on Chinese social media. The footage shows live firing from a desert range, and computer-generated strike sequences, including a final frame where a formation of missiles arcs toward a stylised map of Japan. Chinese media reports that the missile is already in mass production, with the company claiming costs at roughly one-tenth of traditional designs.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link
China’s YKJ-1000 hypersonic missile combines boost glide design, speeds up to Mach 7, and a 500-1,300 km range, using autonomous guidance and terminal manoeuvres to evade interception from containerised road mobile launchers (Picture source: Lingkong Tianxing Technology).
The YKJ-1000 is presented as a boost glide system, sitting in the now familiar family of hypersonic weapons that combine a solid booster with a manoeuvring glide vehicle. According to the developer, the missile offers an operational range between 500 and 1,300 kilometres, a sustained speed band from Mach 5 to Mach 7, and around 360 seconds of powered cruise before transitioning fully to glide. Its airframe carries a glider segment fitted with an additional rocket engine, allowing powered manoeuvres deep into flight rather than a simple ballistic coast. The launch package is mounted in a truck-borne system disguised as a standard shipping container, complete with deployable corner stabilisers, a configuration that allows peacetime concealment in commercial traffic and wartime dispersal on ordinary road networks. Lingkong Tianxing tells Chinese media that this architecture, paired with simplified materials and manufacturing, delivers roughly a 90% cost reduction compared with legacy missiles, and that the baseline version has already entered series production.
Guidance and onboard intelligence are at the heart of the concept. The Global Times report stresses that once launched, the YKJ-1000 can automatically identify targets and execute autonomous evasive manoeuvres against interception attempts before striking. Company statements add that the weapon is equipped with high-resolution sensors that allow it to perform very rapid reconnaissance runs as well as precision attack, exploiting its speed to sprint in, collect targeting data, and withdraw. Lingkong Tianxing further highlights work on an “intelligent version” that will integrate artificial intelligence-based decision-making and swarm collaboration, allowing multiple missiles to share information, coordinate approach vectors, and dynamically reassign targets in flight. In practical terms, that points toward multi-axis, saturation-style attacks in which some vehicles act as decoys or sensors while others deliver the warheads, complicating the defender’s fire control picture.
The missile’s range bracket is built for the geography of the Western Pacific. From likely launch corridors along the Fujian and Zhejiang coasts, the upper end of 1,300 kilometres comfortably covers Okinawa, Kyushu, and key US and Japanese facilities such as Kadena, Naha, Sasebo, and Iwakuni, as well as most of Taiwan and the Ryukyu chain. Civil aviation distance data put the Fuzhou Okinawa leg at roughly 850 kilometres, well inside the envelope advertised by Lingkong Tianxing. At Mach 7, a shot across that span shrinks time to target into single-digit minutes, compressing warning and decision cycles for Japanese and U.S. commanders and giving missile defence crews very little space to classify, track, and engage. The boost glide profile, with a low, manoeuvring terminal trajectory, is explicitly designed to exploit seams between radar horizons and existing engagement envelopes, particularly for naval forces that rely on Aegis and Standard Missile layers optimised for more predictable ballistic or cruise paths.
The YKJ-1000 also needs to be read against China’s wider hypersonic portfolio. Systems such as the DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile with its DFZF glide vehicle have already given the PLA Rocket Force a theatre strike option out to roughly 1,800 to 2,500 kilometres, covering Guam from inland launch sites. The YJ-21, a hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile deployed on Type 055 destroyers and H6 bombers, is widely assessed to have a range of around 1,000 to 1,500 kilometres against carrier groups and large surface combatants. At the higher end, the CJ-1000 hypersonic cruise missile revealed earlier this year is described in Chinese state-linked reporting as an ultra-long range “plane killer” able to engage high-value airborne assets at distances of “thousands of kilometres”. In that context, the YKJ-1000 looks like a lower-cost, containerised theatre weapon, sitting below the strategic CJ-1000 and DF family in range but designed to be procured and fired in far greater numbers.
The Chinese firm Lingkong Tianxing is already known in commercial and space circles for its work on reusable launch vehicles and hypersonic spaceplanes for suborbital tourism and ultra-fast passenger travel, backed by venture funding and incorporated into China’s national research and production system. Its core team claims extensive participation in major hypersonic research projects, and Chinese reporting notes partnerships with state aerospace corporations and universities. In effect, the technology base developed for reusable rockets and future spaceplanes is being leveraged into tactical missiles. If the promised cost reductions are close to reality, the YKJ-1000 signals a move away from hypersonics as boutique assets toward salvo-capable munitions that can be fielded and used at scale.
The cinematic closing shot of eight YKJ-1000s flying toward Japan is therefore more than simple bravado. South China Morning Post coverage underlines that the animation explicitly shows the formation heading for the Japanese archipelago, at a moment when Tokyo is rewriting its defence strategy, investing in counter strike missiles and aligning even more closely with Washington on Taiwan and the East China Sea. Chinese state media and social platforms have amplified the clip, and open source analysts have treated it as a deliberate signal that Japanese cities and bases now sit under a very short-notice hypersonic shadow. The image neatly binds technical reality to political messaging: a missile whose range bracket overlays Japanese territory is shown, for domestic and foreign audiences alike, doing exactly that.
For the United States and its allies, the YKJ-1000 arrives as they are still trying to build the architecture needed to defend against weapons of this class. Washington and Tokyo are investing in space-based tracking constellations to follow hypersonic glide vehicles and in a joint Glide Phase Interceptor intended to engage such threats in the upper atmosphere, but those systems will not be fully operational for years. At the same time, key aspects of the YKJ-1000 remain unverified in open sources: warhead type and payload are undisclosed, no independent data confirms its accuracy, and there is not yet clear evidence of formal PLA Rocket Force or Navy integration. Nevertheless, from a capability development standpoint, China is clearly signalling three audiences. To its own public, that private firms can lead in frontier defence technology. To regional neighbours, especially Japan, that any crisis around Taiwan or the East China Sea will unfold under the credible threat of fast, precise strikes on their homeland. And to the United States, that countering Chinese hypersonic salvos will require not only interceptors, but a fundamental rethink of basing, dispersal, and resilience along the first and second island chains.
