DF-27

The missile China has never shown anyone — the DF-27 is a road-mobile, hypersonic-glide weapon in the 5,000–8,000 kilometer class that the Pentagon's December 2025 China report now lists as a fielded conventional ICBM, with an anti-ship variant it calls China's longest-range carrier killer. Its range rings cover Guam, Hawaii, Alaska and much of the US West Coast. It has never appeared in a parade, never been acknowledged by Beijing, and nearly everything known about its performance traces to a single leaked American intelligence document from 2023.

Overview

The DF-27 (Dongfeng-27; US designator CSS-X-24) extends the formula China proved with the DF-17 — a ballistic booster topped with a hypersonic glide vehicle — from theater range to the intercontinental boundary. The Pentagon first flagged it in 2021, quoting Chinese military writings that put its range class at 5,000–8,000 km: enough to hold at risk everything beyond the Second Island Chain, from Guam to Hawaii, Alaska and, at the upper bound, parts of the continental United States. Its capabilities became semi-public through the April 2023 Discord intelligence leaks: a Joint Staff assessment describing a 25 February 2023 test in which the glide vehicle flew ~2,100 km in 12 minutes, and judging the system to have a "high probability of penetrating US ballistic-missile defenses." By the December 2025 China Military Power Report, the Pentagon listed the DF-27 as fielded — a conventional ICBM-class weapon at the top of the PLA Rocket Force's strike ladder, with an anti-ship variant that is China's longest-range ASBM, a category no other country fields at any range close to it. What makes the DF-27 unique in the lexicon is its epistemic profile: a weapon assessed to reshape the Pacific naval balance, for which not a single official Chinese data point exists — no parade appearance, no acknowledgment, no imagery beyond disputed TV frames and social-media sightings.

Development

The DF-27's public history is a story of other people's documents. The Pentagon's 2021 China Military Power Report first named it, "in development," quoting PRC military writings on the 5,000–8,000 km range class; analysts at IISS later matched it to June 2021 CCTV footage of six-axle transporter-erectors resembling DF-26 launchers with wedge-shaped payload sections — a glider's signature. The decisive disclosure came involuntarily: among the April 2023 Discord leaks, a Joint Staff intelligence briefing dated 28 February 2023 described a 25 February 2023 flight test — the glide vehicle flying twelve minutes and ~2,100 km — and assessed land-attack and anti-ship variants "fielded in limited numbers" since about 2022, with a "high probability of penetrating US BMD," per The Washington Post; the Pentagon never authenticated the document. Weeks later the South China Morning Post, citing one anonymous source, claimed the missile had quietly been in service "before 2019" — a timeline irreconcilable with the US assessment and unverifiable. The 2024 CMPR called the DF-27 deployed with conventional land-attack, anti-ship and possibly nuclear payload options. Pointedly, it was absent from the 3 September 2025 Victory Day parade — the Federation of American Scientists notes it remains the only assessed Chinese ICBM-class system "not yet displayed in public" — before the December 2025 CMPR elevated it to a fielded conventional ICBM with the longest-range ASBM variant in the world, per USNI News.

Design & capabilities

Every performance statement here is an estimate, a leak, or a Pentagon characterization — there is no Chinese data. The range, 5,000–8,000 km, is a class quoted from PRC military writings, not a measurement; IISS reads the leaked 2023 test data as consistent with the band's lower end. The payload is a hypersonic glide vehicle — maneuvering at depressed altitudes where mid-course interceptors struggle, hence the leaked "high probability of penetrating US BMD" judgment — with the 2024 CMPR describing the HGV as optional alongside ballistic payloads. IISS assesses the booster as likely derived from the DF-26, mirroring how the DF-17 paired its glider with a modified DF-16 — solid-propellant, road-mobile on a six-axle TEL, which is what makes the system survivable and hard to count. The 2025 CMPR's "Fielded Conventional Strike" chart credits two conventional variants: land-attack and anti-ship, the latter making the DF-27 the apex of China's ASBM family above the DF-21D and DF-26 — an intercontinental-range weapon aimed at moving warships, something no other nation fields. Naval analyst Andrew Erickson calls China's ASBM force, "now potentially extending to intercontinental ranges with the DF-27," a "new form of naval force" that has "dramatically changed the naval balance." The honest caveats are structural: an ASBM at such ranges depends on an ocean-surveillance and targeting chain (satellites, OTH radar, relays) whose end-to-end performance China has never publicly demonstrated, and the missile's accuracy, warhead mass and inventory are simply unknown.

Variants

• Land-attack conventional variant — asserted in the leaked 2023 assessment; fielded per the 2024/2025 CMPRs.
• Anti-ship variant (ASBM) — fielded per the 2025 CMPR; China's longest-range anti-ship weapon.
• Nuclear payload option — listed as possible in the 2024 CMPR, but the DF-27 is absent from the 2025 report's fielded-nuclear tables: the nuclear question is genuinely unresolved.
• "DF-27A" — a December 2025 single-outlet report whose test details are identical to the 2023 leak; uncorroborated, not treated as real here.

Combat record / operational use

None — and unlike most unfired missiles, the DF-27 has only one publicly known flight test (February 2023, known solely through the leak). Its operational significance is positional: the Pentagon now draws its range rings over the entire Indo-Pacific, Hawaii, Alaska and much of the US West Coast, and places it atop the PLARF's conventional strike ladder (DF-17 → DF-21D → DF-26 → DF-27). No PLARF brigade or base has been publicly associated with it; inventory is unknown; unverified TEL-convoy sightings circulated on Chinese social media as recently as April 2026. Its absence from the September 2025 parade — where the DF-5C, DF-61, DF-31BJ, JL-3 and DF-26D all debuted — is itself a data point: Beijing parades what it wants deterrence credit for and conceals what it wants ambiguity around, and the DF-27 remains in the second category. The US response is already visible in procurement: the Guam integrated air-and-missile-defense build-out is sized against exactly this class of threat.

Advantages

• Range that changes the map — 5,000–8,000 km puts Hawaii, Alaska and West Coast ports inside a conventional strike envelope for the first time.
• HGV penetration — a maneuvering glide vehicle stresses every fielded US defense layer; the leaked assessment judged penetration highly probable.
• First-of-kind ASBM reach — no other nation holds moving ships at risk at even a fraction of this range.
• Road-mobile survivability — solid-fueled on DF-26-class TELs; hard to find, hard to preempt, impossible to count from open sources.
• Deliberate ambiguity — never shown, never acknowledged: adversary planners must assume it works and is everywhere.

Drawbacks / limitations

• One leaked test is the entire public evidence base — every performance figure rests on a document the Pentagon never authenticated.
• The kill chain is the hard part — intercontinental anti-ship shots require persistent maritime targeting China has not demonstrated end-to-end.
• Unresolved warhead status — the 2024-listed nuclear option vanished from 2025's fielded-nuclear tables; ambiguity cuts against crisis stability and invites worst-case US planning.
• Unknown accuracy and inventory — "fielded" says nothing about how many, how precise, or how reliable.
• Escalation weight — a conventional ICBM-class weapon whose launches look strategic; any use against US territory tests the conventional/nuclear firebreak.

Counterparts

The DF-27's nearest relative is its likely booster donor, the DF-26 — the dual-capable "Guam killer" whose land-attack/anti-ship pairing the DF-27 repeats one range band higher — and its conceptual parent is the DF-17, China's first fielded HGV weapon. Above it sits the DF-41 ICBM (nuclear, unambiguous); below, the DF-21D that invented the ASBM category. Foreign comparisons underline its singularity: the US Army's Dark Eagle hypersonic weapon reaches roughly 3,000 km — one class below — and the US fields no conventional ICBM and no ASBM at all; Russia's Oreshnik is the closest foreign analogue as an IRBM-class, defense-penetrating signal weapon, but it is neither anti-ship nor intercontinental. The 2025 CMPR presents the DF-27 as first-of-kind, and on open evidence that framing holds: it is the only weapon on earth assessed to combine intercontinental range, hypersonic glide and an anti-ship mission.

Outlook

The DF-27 file will move when one of three things happens. First, a public reveal — a parade appearance or state-media confirmation would end the ambiguity phase and signal Beijing wants explicit deterrence credit; FAS analysts already speculate the rumored "conventional ICBM" slot in China's force structure belongs to it. Second, a demonstrated test — any tracked long-range HGV flight, especially a maritime-target event, would convert leak-based assessment into observed capability and force US Pacific basing decisions (Guam defense, carrier operating areas, West Coast port hardening) onto a faster clock. Third, brigade attribution — the first credible basing evidence would let analysts size the force. For BattlePolicy readers the DF-27 is the cleanest case of a weapon whose strategic effect precedes its proof: US Navy dispersal doctrine, Guam's missile-defense architecture and the conventional-ICBM debate in Washington are all already priced against a missile nobody outside classified channels has verifiably seen. The next CMPR's language — and whether the nuclear option reappears — is the single most load-bearing sentence to watch.

Key specifications

No official Chinese data exists. Figures are Pentagon CMPR characterizations, leaked-assessment contents, or analyst estimates — labeled.

Sources

1. Military and Security Developments Involving the PRC 2021 (first DF-27 mention) — US DoD
2. Military and Security Developments Involving the PRC 2025 (fielded conventional ICBM/ASBM) — US DoD
3. Chinese Forces Fielding Intercontinental Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles, Pentagon Says — USNI News
4. Pentagon document leak: what it revealed about Russia, China, Israel — The Washington Post
5. Intelligence leak reveals China's successful test of a new hypersonic missile — IISS
6. DF-27 — Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
7. Nuclear weapons at China's 2025 Victory Day parade — Federation of American Scientists
8. China's DF-27 Conventional ICBM/ASBM: Threatening America's Homeland, Pacific Ships — Andrew Erickson
9. China's advanced DF-27 hypersonic missile has been in service for several years — SCMP
10. What the Pentagon's new report on Chinese military power reveals — War on the Rocks
11. Latest Pentagon report: China's military advancing amid churn — War on the Rocks
12. China's 2025 Victory Day parade weapons graphic — Reuters
13. China deploys DF-27, world's first conventional ICBM — EurasianTimes

🔒 The Analyst Section on DF-27 is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Below the line: procurement and contract history, the suppliers and companies behind the system, our head-to-head analyst view of the systems it actually competes with, and the BattlePolicy assessment note. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →