Changfeng (missile)

The Chang Feng, or "Long Wind" is a turbojet powered land-attack cruise missile, indigenously developed by China. It is the first domestically produced Chinese land-attack cruise missile, and it is the first land-attack cruise missile to enter service with the People's Liberation Army. There are two variants of the Chang Feng, the Chang Feng 1 and the Chang Feng 2.

In the 1970s, the United States concluded that cruise missiles are a very cost effective means of achieving strategic dominance. The development and deployment cost of 3,000 cruise missiles would cost 8.358 billion dollars, plus an additional 10 billion dollars to modify 170 Boeing B-52s to carry the missile. By comparison, the Soviet Union would have to expend a disproportionate amount of resources to protect itself from the threat produced by such a project. Such a project would require dozens of Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft over a thousand interceptors, and over a thousand SA-10 or SA-12 Surface-to-air missile sites, at a cost of almost a trillion US dollars.

Facing a similar strategic choice, China was impressed with the cost-effectiveness of the cruise missile, and conducted its own study in 1979, based on the American study. Though the exact information from the Chinese study has been classified since the completion of the research, China did release the result, which was that the cost effectiveness of land attack missiles is nine-to-one . Based on the results of this study, the state-owned Sanjiang Space Estate began development of an indigenous cruise missile, which became the Chang Feng 1.

In 1993, the Chang Feng 1 entered series production and Chinese service. Several years later, the existence of CF-1 was revealed to Chinese public when two Chinese magazines, Aerospace China and Aerospace World reported its development, and the second magazine further revealed the name Chang Feng (长风), meaning Long Wind, for the first time to the Chinese public. Following the results of the Gulf War, the Chinese military decided to modify the existing Chang Feng 1 missiles for a precision strike role.