China Unveils Next Generation ‘Guam Killer’ Missile: What New Capabilities Will the DF-26D Introduce?

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has unveiled a new variant of the DF-26 ballistic missile system, a launcher for which was seen driving through Beijing during rehearsals for an upcoming military parade. The parade scheduled for September 3 is expected to see a wide range of new weapons systems unveiled, and will mark 80 years since the defeat of the Japanese Empire’s colonial project on Chinese territory. The Japanese government has announced that it will actively lobby countries across the world not to send representatives to attend the event. The operationalisation of a new variant of the DF-26 has the potential to cause serious complications for the U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific, as the missile system is capable of striking all major American bases in the region west of Hawaii, while also being able to target U.S. Navy warships at ranges of over 5000 kilometres.

Although many of the weapons systems recently unveiled have seen their service entries long anticipated, the development of a new DF-26D variant was not widely predicted, and represents a highly unwelcome development for U.S. and broader Western Bloc interests. The original DF-26 entered service in the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force in 2016, and has raised significant concern in the Western world for its ability to hold targets at risk with high precision attacks over very long ranges. The missile has been dubbed ‘Guam Killer’ due to its range and the arsenal’s expected primary target, with studies having indicated that Andersen Air Force Base and Guam Naval Base on the island would struggle to function after even more minor ballistic missile attacks using conventional warheads. As the United States Armed Forces have planned extensive investments build new missile defences on Guam, it is expected that the DF-26D will improve on the original missile design’s penetrative capabilities to bypass such defences.

The new capabilities that will be introduced by the DF-26D remain highly uncertain, with one possibility being that it could integrate a greater number of reentry vehicles, and possibly hypersonic glide vehicles, to more effectively bypass hostile air defences. Although the Pentagon has struggled to afford planned air defence deployments on Guam, American carrier strike groups are also well protected by SM-3 and SM-6 anti-ballistic missiles, with the deployment of faster and more manoeuvrable reentry vehicles, and of more vehicles per missile, potentially allowing Chinese missiles to target them much more effectively. China’s defence sector has made significant progress towards developing hypersonic glide vehicles for a range of missile classes, and is currently considered the world leader in the field, making the integration of such vehicles onto intermediate range missiles for both anti-shipping and a ground attack duties appear likely.

The DF-26’s development has been complemented by the development of a wide range of other assets capable of striking hostile warships and bases into the mid-Pacific and beyond. These have included both ground and air launched variants of the DF-100 cruise missile, which pairs an estimated 3,000–4,000-kilometre range with a very high a Mach 4-5 cruising speed, as well as a range of other air launched cruise and ballistic missiles deployed by the H-6 bomber fleet. China is notably far from the only country which has developed increasingly formidable means of striking so far into the Pacific, with North Korea having in March 2024 unveiled the Hwasong-16B, which was the world’s first known intermediate range missile designed to carry a hypersonic glide vehicle. Russia in November 2024 unveiled and combat tested the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile which also carries hypersonic glide vehicles, although it remains uncertain if or when these may be deployed in the Pacific to also place Western Bloc forces in the region in the firing line. The DF-26 nevertheless remains the only missile of its kind confirmed to have an anti-ship capability alongside its ground attack capability.