The John Batchelor Show

VIDEO: Chinese 'Aurora'?

September 30, 2015

Wednesday   30 September 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Rick Fisher, senior Fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, in re:   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/29/did-china-just-hit-mach-5.html
Axe is taking a huge risk in publishing based on a sole source.  Yes, it's a Chinese source that appeared in a major AVIC publication, but Jane's would not do this based on this one source.  
And that's not to say it did not happen, or that the PLA has not been pouring mountains of money into advanced high supersonic and hypersonic vehicle research.  It most certainly is doing that.
Chinese chat pages most often tout the idea that China has built its own version of the Pratt Whitney J58, a turbojet that transitions to a ramjet, which powered the US LockMart SR71 Mach 3 recon plane.  
This was basically advanced 1950s tech for us, but would enable a game-changer high supersonic platform for them.  We did make four SR-71-launched D-21 ramjet-powered drone missions over China in the 1960s and the Chinese captured at least one that crashed.   So they've been sitting on that ramjet tech for decades.