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In the 1990s, the People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) initiated the development of the successors of\u00a0the HJ-8<\/a>\u00a0antitank guided missile (ATGM). The new ATGMs were to be more modular, have more features and have a longer range. They looked at foreign missiles such as the Spike, Javelin and Kornet. Only recently have we seen the fruits of their labor: the\u00a0HJ-9<\/a>,\u00a0HJ-10<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0HJ-12<\/a>\u00a0ATGMs. Given the HJ-8\u2019s success on the battlefield in Bosnia, Syria and Iraq more than two decades after it first saw service, could these missiles pose a future threat to American tanks?<\/p>\nThe HJ-9 is the most conventional upgrade of the HJ-8. Entering development in 1988, it finished development and was revealed ten years later in 1999. The developmental period wasn\u2019t without problems; according to the deputy chief engineer Yang Chunming, guidance was one of the major hurdles that slowed development. During one failed test firing,\u00a0a test HJ-9 overshot the target<\/a>\u00a0and landed in a farmer\u2019s watermelon field. The engineers searching for the missile were assumed to be watermelon robbers by the Chinese villagers, resulting in an incident. Much like the Israeli MAPATS and the South African\u00a0ZT-3 Ingwe<\/a>, the HJ-9 is an improved variant of the standard TOW design that the HJ-8 also is a variant of. Like the Israeli and South African designs, the HJ-9 trades the wire-guidance of the TOW and HJ-8\u00a0in favor of a laser beam<\/a>. This allows the missile to be guided more accurately and fly faster. This also increases the maximum range by one kilometer, giving it an effective range of five kilometers. The HJ-9 uses two rocket motors instead of the HJ-8\u2019s one in order to physically be able to shoot out to that range. The laser guidance system can guide to a bit further, 5.5 kilometers, however, at that range the gas used to maneuver the missile may be depleted, limiting the possible angles of maneuver. The HJ-9A improves the HJ-9 further, adding a millimeter wave (MMW) seeker to the missile, effectively making it fire and forget. The most common launch platform for the HJ-9 is the WZ-550 light armored vehicle, a 4×4 wheeled vehicle that can travel at speeds of ninety-five kilometers an hour. Internal sources state that the HJ-9B\u2019s seeker will be up to the PLA\u2019s decision, whether to retain the MMW seeker or to return to laser guidance. In addition, while early HJ-9s lacked the capability to top attack like the TOW-2B Aero, recent advances in Chinese fuzing technology have now made it possible in the HJ-9B.<\/p>\n