Everything that we know about China's satellite-controlled ‘dream bullet’

The Cold War has been over for three decades now. However, this doesn't mean that superpowers don't compete with each other in different fields.

Mao Zedong once said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. Although China and the United States aren’t engaged in a direct fight, it’s no secret that Washington and Beijing compete to see who has the biggest gun and wields the biggest power.

The South China Morning Post reports that Chinese naval scientists claim to have developed the “dream bullet”, an ammunition that could potentially reshape the military landscape forever.

This smart shell, propelled by an electromagnetic railgun, receives satellite navigation signals to improve its accuracy.

This piece of ammo is said to be able to reach Mach 7, or in other words, 5328 mph (ca. 8,575 km/h). This would be the equivalent of breaking the speed of sound seven times.

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British newspaper The Express highlights that the “dream bullet” can travel 2,500 meters (over 8200 ft) in just one second.

However, the smart shell still has its limitations. Despite making use of satellite navigation, it has a margin of error of 15 meters (49 feet), making it useless for small targets.

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Nonetheless, this smart shell, capable of changing direction, is to be used against large targets, such as a warship, or fixed spots, for example, a port.

The ‘dream bullet’, British newspaper The Sun points out, still has a few issues that Chinese naval scientists have to work out.

As it happens in ballistics, any flaw in the making of the smart shell could lead it to stray, and the speed and force that it has to endure leaves very little space for such errors.

Another issue is the shell generating intense heat due to friction, which scientists have addressed using a thermal barrier.

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However, the biggest issue, the one that stumped scientists for a long time, is how the smart shell could be able to receive satellite communication but avoid getting interrupted by signals after being fired.

The idea of this “dream bullet”, the South China Morning Post remarks, was originally developed by the US military before abandoning it.

According to AP News, from 2012 to 2021 attempted to develop a “futuristic” electromagnetic railgun that followed many of the same characteristics featured in the new Chinese shell.

The US Navy claims to have found a number of problems during the development of their own “dream bullet”, such as limited range and rate of fire and whether such a gun could stay together during continues firing.

A normal gun can fire about 600 times before the barrel has to be refurbished. The US Navy railgun prototype had to be fixed after 12 to 24 shots.

Meanwhile, the US Navy claims to be focusing more on hypersonic missiles to counter the railgun. Only time will tell what this mean for US-China relations.