The silhouettes of missiles, tanks and undersea vehicles were unmistakable as China prepared for its most revealing military parade in six years.
For military watchers, the procession of veiled armaments offered valuable clues to what might be on show at a massive military parade today, which China says will reveal the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) “new generation” of domestically produced, active-duty weaponry.
It will be the largest display of advancements in China’s military hardware since the 2019 National Day parade, which celebrated 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The 2019 parade saw the PLA unveil weapons including a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, a medium-range ballistic missile mated with a hypersonic glide vehicle, and its first undersea drone.
In today’s parade, military watchers are expecting new versions of some of the weaponry and technology that debuted in 2019.
Parade rehearsals have shown what are almost certainly new types of hypersonic missile systems and huge undersea drones among other weaponry, masked by tarpaulins and fabric coverings.
Last month, officials ran down a categorical list of what the PLA will show off today.
“The parade involves more than 10,000 personnel, over a hundred aircraft, and several hundred ground vehicles,” Maj. Gen. Xu Guizhong, executive deputy director of the Parade Command Office of the PLA’s Central Theater Command, said.
More than 100 different types of equipment will be included, all of it battle ready and domestically produced, Xu said, adding that a large proportion would be new armaments making their debut.
The general ticked off a range of China’s most modern weaponry that it’s never shown the world before: cutting-edge drones, directed-energy weapons, electronic jamming systems, hypersonic systems, air-defense and missile-defense technologies, and strategic missiles.
And there will be the usual formations of fighter jets, tanks and troops, Xu said.
