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.

🔒 The rest of the DF-27 file is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Stop here and you miss the part that actually matters: what the leaked test data does and doesn't prove, the unresolved nuclear question, how it stacks up against the DF-26, Dark Eagle and Oreshnik, the complete specifications table, and our analysts' force-structure and assessment notes. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →