Key Information

Summary

In 1963, when China’s nuclear and missile programmes were about to reach the final breakthrough, creating a weapon that could defend the country against nuclear-armed strategic missile attacks was also considered by the Chinese leadership. During his meeting with the 'Father of Chinese Rocketry' Dr Qian Xuesen, the then Chinese leader Chairman Mao Zedong said that the missile defence capability should not be dominated only by the two superpowers, and that China must also develop its own missile defence weapons, no matter how many years it would take. By 1967, proposals for a missile defence system – known as Project 640 – were prepared, including the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) interceptor, the anti-missile super gun, and land-based high-power anti-missile laser.

The 2nd Academy of the 7th Ministry of Machinery Industry (Ministry of Aerospace Industry), officially renamed Academy of Anti-Ballistic Missile & Anti-Satellite in 1969, was responsible for the development of the Chinese AMB system. Its subordinated 210 Institute was assigned to the development of the anti-missile super gun. Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics was responsible for the development of the anti-missile laser. The 2nd Academy also began to develop the anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon technology in the early 1970s.

Proposals of the Project 640 was finalised in a meeting held in Beijing in January 1967. The whole project comprised five sub-systems. Key elements of the project included the FanJi-1 (FanJi =  “Counterattack”) series ABM, the XianFeng (“Pioneer”) anti-missile super gun, and a land-based missile early warning network. The meeting also decided to speed up the building of a dedicated ABM test range and the development of the nuclear warhead for the ABM system. The project entered full-scale development in the early 1970s.

Project 640 faced enormous technical, financial and political difficulties right from the beginning. The country’s technological and economic capabilities were obviously unable to support a huge project like this. The designing process was also seriously disrupted by the chaos in the later stage of the Culture Revolution. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union and later the closure of the U.S. Safeguard ABM system also made an independent Chinese missile defence system unnecessary. After Mao’s death in 1976, the development of the missile defence system began to slow down. In March 1980, the new leader Deng Xiaoping finally decided to cancel the whole project so that the country could concentrate on economic development.

FanJi (FJ) Anti-Ballistic Missile

The 2nd Academy (now China Academy of Defence Technology [CADT] under CASIC) began to develop the FJ-1 (FanJi-1) ABM system in 1969. The FJ-1 was a two-stage, semi-active radar-homing, hypersonic interceptor missile designed to intercept ballistic missile warhead at low-  to medium-altitude. The first-stage of the missile uses liquid propellant and the second-stage uses solid propellant. The missile is 14m in length and weights ~10,000kg.

Flight tests of two unarmed missiles were carried out successfully between August and September 1979. At the same time, the PLA proposed to deploy the FJ-1 to form a missile defence zone around the capital Beijing. However, the FJ-1 development programme was cancelled by the Chinese government in March 1980 due to both financial and political reasons.

Development of the FJ-2 (FanJi-2) low-altitude ABM system began in the early 1970s. Six flight tests were carried out using 1:5 scaled models between October 1971 and April 1972, with five of them being fully successful. The development programme was cancelled in 1973.

The 2nd Academy also proposed a high-altitude ABM system known as FJ-3 (FanJi-3) in 1974, but the development stopped in 1977.

“XianFeng” Anti-Missile Super Gun

The Anti-missile super gun developed by the 210 Institute was given a codename “Project 640-2”. Initial research was carried out on a 140mm smoothbore cannon, which could fire 18kg projectile to a maximum distance of 74km. In January 1967, an anti-missile super gun known as “Xianfeng” (Pioneer) was proposed. The super gun was 26 metre in length and weighted 155 tonnes. Mounted on a fixed gun rack, the 420mm calibre super gun was designed to fire a 160kg unguided rocket-propelled projectile to intercept the incoming nuclear warhead. Various tests were carried out in the early 1970s, but the design was proven impractical. The development of the super gun was put on a halt in 1977 and finally cancelled in March 1980.

Ground-Based Missile Early Warning Network

Compared to the ABM system, the development of the associated missile early warning and tracking system was much more productive. The first stage of the project included five missile early warning stations located in Khashi, Nanning, Kunming, Hainan, Jiaodong, and Xiangxi; and a command & control centre in Weinan (No.28 Station). Later the network also included a computing station codenamed “Qin Ling”, a recovery and tracking station codenamed “Chang Jiang”, a mobile tracking station codenamed “Qian Shao”, a second mobile tracking station codenamed “Huang He”, and an additional early warning station codenamed “Chang Cheng” in Changchun.

The key elements of the missile early warning network included 7010 phased array early warning surveillance radar and 110 mono-pulse missile tracking radar. Both radar systems played key roles in providing initial missile early warning capability for China, as well as supporting China’s ICBM tests and space programme.

7010 Radar

Developed by 14th Electronic Institute in Nanjing in 1976, 7010 radar was a fixed, land-based phased array surveillance radar designed to detect, identify, and track intercontinental ballistic missiles and other objects in outer space. The development of 7010 radar began in 1970 and the radar became fully operational in 1976. The 40m X 20m radar antenna was built on the Huangyang Mountain slope 1,600m above the sea level in Xuanhua, Hebei Province, about 140km northwest of Beijing. A second site was built in Henan Province. In July 1979, the 7010 radar sites provided accurate data on the re-entry time of the de-orbited U.S. Skylab spacecraft. On 12 January 1983, 7010 radar successfully predicted the time and place of landing for the failed Soviet Union nuclear-powered satellite Cosmos 1402. The radar site was abandoned in the early 1990s.

110 Mono-Pulse Missile Tracking Radar

110 radar was developed jointly by 14th Electronic Institute in Nanjing and the Electronic Institute of China Academy of Science (CAS) in the 1970s. The radar antenna was 25m in diameter and weighted 400 tonnes. The radar antenna was housed in a large radome 36.5m in height and 44m in diameter. The radar became fully operational in 1977, with only one station built at the Zhanyi Space/Missile Tracking Station in the southern Yunnan Province.

Following the cancellation of Project 640, the missile early warning and tracking network evolved into the space tracking, telemetry and command (TT&C) network in the 1980s to support China’s space programme. However, its functions for missile early warning and space surveillance still remain.

Last updated: 26 September 2008