This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China released rare new DF-100 footage as part of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) documentary marking the force’s 98th anniversary, offering fresh visual cues on the supersonic cruise missile’s specifications and strategic reach.
The two-minute video shows the DF-100 operating during a cable communications exercise simulating full-spectrum jamming, reinforcing the archetype: a fast, long-range strike platform meant to arrive in waves and overwhelm layered defenses across the First and Second Island chains before they can react.
Technically, the system slots into China’s strike portfolio as a high-speed standoff weapon. The DF-100, first unveiled in 2019, is credited with a 3,000–4,000-kilometer range, a Mach 4 cruising speed and high strike accuracy, enabling time-on-target hits within 40 minutes.
Those capabilities, if accurate and realized, bring US bases in Okinawa and Guam and key logistics hubs in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea into the weapon’s target range.
The DF-100 can launch from road-mobile vehicles or the H-6N bomber, with air launch extending reach to roughly 6,000 kilometers. Footage highlighting a sharp conical warhead and oversized tail fins suggests maneuver authority and penetration potential, while the urban launch scene telegraphs mobility and survivability in cluttered terrain.
As a class, supersonic standoff munitions occupy a purposeful middle ground. In a November 2020 War on the Rocks article, David Zikusoka notes that weapons flying between Mach 1 and Mach 5 balance speed, cost and survivability, arriving faster than subsonic cruise missiles and striking time-sensitive targets in minutes without the nuclear ambiguity of ballistic or hypersonic trajectories.
Zikusoka adds that, while not invulnerable, this speed envelope complicates interception timelines and compresses decision cycles, particularly when used in coordinated salvos that strain radar tracking and fire-control loops.
The DF-100’s value also lies in how it can be teamed with ballistic missile fires. The China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) mentions in a November 2020 report that the DF-100 does not extend China’s geographic reach beyond existing ballistic systems, but it enables simultaneous time-on-target salvos alongside DF-21 or DF-26 missiles, forcing defenders to counter different flight profiles at once.
That complexity amplifies a preexisting problem. Asia Times has previously noted that Guam’s disjointed air and missile defense architecture may be insufficient against saturation attacks mixing drones, ballistic missiles and supersonic and subsonic cruise missiles with hypersonic gliders—an attack geometry designed to exhaust interceptors and create exploitable gaps.
US magazine depth and reload constraints magnify that risk. Greg Hayden mentions in an April 2025 CIRIS article that even sophisticated US missile defenses can be emptied quickly by China’s expanding arsenal because interceptor stockpiles are limited.
Hayden points out that at-sea reloading delays for Aegis-equipped warships can sideline launchers for hours or days, while production bottlenecks and single-source dependencies hinder rapid replenishment.
He also adds that without at-sea reloading and genuine surge manufacturing, US missile defenses could collapse in a high-intensity fight as shot doctrine collides with inventory reality. Yet China’s precision fire is only as deadly as its ability to find, fix and finish targets at scale, and that is where its system-level vulnerability sits.
General Chance Saltzman highlighted in an April 2025 hearing before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that the PLA’s precision strike enterprise leans heavily on more than 500 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites—optical, radar and radiofrequency (RF)—to build a space-enabled targeting network capable of holding US and allied forces at risk.
Saltzman mentioned that these assets are inherently vulnerable due to predictable orbits and limited defensive measures, stressing that degrading China’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) backbone could blunt its long-range strike capability by breaking the cueing chain that missiles like the DF-100 require.
The timing and tone of the DF-100’s showcase also fit a signaling pattern tied to US missile placements along China’s periphery.
In September 2024, China conducted its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch in 44 years, a move that coincided with the announcement that month of the indefinite US Typhon missile deployment in the Philippines. The Typhon launcher can fire SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles, the latter capable of striking mainland targets.
Following the Typhon deployment, the US indefinitely stationed the shorter-ranged Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) in the Philippines, with plans unveiled this month to deploy NMESIS in Japan as well.
The DF-100’s supersonic speed maps neatly to time-sensitive, high-value mobile targets such as Typhon and NMESIS, threatening to kill them before they can fire or relocate—an effect that increases confidence in preemption while inviting counter-preemption.
This US deployment pattern is read in Beijing as part of a broader containment scheme. In a January 2024 report for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Veerle Nouwens and other writers mention that Chinese analysts perceive US plans to field land-based missiles across the First and Second Island Chains as a direct challenge to China’s strategic mobility and posture.
According to Nouwens and others, these forward deployments are seen as a deliberate attempt to undermine China’s anti-access/area-denial systems and threaten inland facilities. They note that, in response, Chinese strategists anticipate China will substantially increase its land-based missile deployments—conventional and nuclear—to counter the perceived encirclement.
Capacity-wise, the PLA Rocket Force remains the backbone of that response. In a June 2025 US Senate Committee on Appropriations statement, ranking US officials mentioned that the PLARF is pressing ahead with modernization to deepen strategic deterrence.
According to the statement, the PLARF possesses over 900 short-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Taiwan; 400 ground-launched cruise missiles able to hit targets across the entire First Island Chain; 1,300 medium-range ballistic missiles that cover the Second Island Chain; 500 intermediate-range ballistic missiles that can strike parts of Alaska and Australia; and more than 400 nuclear-capable ICBMs with global reach.
Those numbers, combined with road mobility and decoys, illustrate how volume and variety can saturate defenses and create dilemmas at sea and ashore. But order-of-battle size is not the same as combat credibility.
While acknowledging rapid modernization, Eamon Passey points out in a December 2024 article for the American Foreign Policy Council that the PLARF still suffers persistent capability gaps that undercut deterrence.
Passey mentions that China has added dual-capable platforms and expanded joint training, but systemic weaknesses endure: a shortage of battle-tested personnel, unrealistic training scenarios, and poor-quality conscripts that limit operational credibility.
In addition, Passey notes that corruption concerns further erode institutional integrity, complicating reform and readiness at precisely the moment China is attempting to knit sensors, shooters and command networks into a high-velocity kill web.
Whether meant as a warning or a performance, the DF-100’s reemergence signals that the next Pacific missile duel may hinge less on who fires first than on who can keep finding, hitting and sustaining the missile fight.
