A conventional ICBM with an anti-ship variant, assessed to range Hawaii and Alaska
US Leak Reveals China's Huge "Hypersonic Leap" | Can US' Defences Stop Xi's Next-Gen DF-27 Missile? (CRUX)
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The Pentagon’s 2025 report on Chinese military power lists anti-ship roles for the DF-27 at 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers.
the newer DF-27, which US assessments credit with a range class of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers.
China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles, the DF-21D and the DF-26, are purpose-built to hold carriers at arm’s length, with the DF-26 credited with a range of nearly 2,500 miles and the newer DF-27 reaching farther still.
The DF-27 is an anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers.
the range the U.S. military attributes to China's DF-27 intermediate-range ballistic missile is 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers
The Pentagon’s 2025 annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving China publicly confirmed for the first time that Beijing has fielded the DF-27 as a conventional intercontinental ballistic missile, with an estimated range of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers.
China successfully tested its DF-27 intermediate-range ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle in 2023.
Entity 'DF-27' mentioned in report
The DF-27 is an emerging Chinese long-range ballistic missile associated in public reporting with hypersonic glide-vehicle payloads and both land-attack and anti-ship roles. Compared with older regional ballistic missiles, it is discussed as a system that could extend precision strike pressure well beyond the first island chain.
Open-source assessments describe the DF-27 as a long-range, road-mobile system that may carry a maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle. That combination is significant because long range expands launch-area depth, while maneuvering reentry complicates tracking, discrimination, and interceptor engagement compared with a simpler ballistic trajectory.
If fielded at scale, DF-27-class systems would affect U.S. and allied planning by threatening bases, logistics hubs, and naval forces at much longer distances than legacy SRBMs. Its importance is therefore not only a single missile's range; it is the way such weapons widen the geography that defenders must surveil, harden, and protect.
China has released no official DF-27 data and the missile has never been publicly displayed. Every figure below comes from US Department of Defense reporting or open-source analysis and should be read as an estimate.
The programme has no published Chinese chronology; the milestones below are drawn from successive US Department of Defense reports and Western analysis.
The US Department of Defense annual report on Chinese military power described a system designated DF-27 as in development, with a range class spanning 5,000-8,000 km.
A tranche of leaked US intelligence material reported a DF-27 flight test earlier that year and assessed the missile as likely able to penetrate US ballistic missile defences; the same material indicated a limited number may already have entered service (reported).
The 2023 US report continued to describe the DF-27 as under development, leaving the fielding claims in the leaked material unconfirmed.
The 2024 US report stated the missile may have a hypersonic glide vehicle payload option in addition to conventional land-attack, conventional anti-ship and nuclear payloads.
The 3 September parade in Beijing displayed the DF-5C, DF-31BJ, DF-61, DF-26D, DF-17 and JL-1, but not the DF-27, which analysts listed among Chinese ballistic missiles never publicly shown.
The US annual report released on 23 December 2025 identified the DF-27 as a fielded conventional ICBM with an anti-ship variant, describing it as China's longest-range anti-ship ballistic missile at 5,000-8,000 km.
Australian analysis cited the US declaration that the DF-27 is in service with manoeuvring conventional warheads accurate enough to strike ships, and treated the missile as a new conventional threat to targets across Australia.
What sets the DF-27 apart in US assessments is not its speed but its category. Ballistic missiles of intercontinental range have been nuclear instruments almost without exception; the 2025 US report treats the DF-27 as a fielded conventional system at that range, with an anti-ship variant described as China's longest-ranged. If those assessments hold, the missile decouples intercontinental reach from nuclear use, and the shorter-range DF-21D and DF-26 become the near end of a continuum rather than its outer limit.
The operational value of the anti-ship variant depends less on the missile than on the sensing chain behind it. Holding a manoeuvring warship at risk several thousand kilometres from the launch point requires detection, classification, tracking and mid-course update over an area far larger than anything the earlier anti-ship systems needed, and no such engagement has been publicly demonstrated against a defended, moving target. Reported hypersonic glide vehicle payloads complicate interception by flattening and shaping the trajectory, but they do not solve the targeting problem; the more plausible near-term effect is that US and allied forces must assume threat coverage over rear areas — Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, northern Australia — that were previously treated as sanctuary for basing, repair and logistics.
The corresponding risk runs in the other direction. A launch from a road-mobile intercontinental-range system cannot be classified as conventional by its flight profile alone, so a conventional DF-27 shot would present the same early-warning picture as a nuclear one and would have to be judged within minutes. That ambiguity is structural rather than incidental, and it is sharpened by how little is publicly verifiable: China has released no specifications, the missile has not been shown in public, and the fielding claim rests on US government assessment rather than on observed deployment. Every figure attached to the system should be read with that caveat.
Pentagon Sounds Alarm As China Expands Missile Arsenal: Xi's DF-27 Missile Can Easily Hit Alaska? (Hindustan Times)
Watch on YouTubeUS report: is the DF-27 on combat duty and the world's only fielded intercontinental hypersonic missile? (Bilibili)
Watch on BilibiliThe DF-27 and its transporter-erector-launcher explained (Bilibili)
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