China’s deployment of the HQ-16F missile opposite Taiwan reflects Beijing’s growing concern that future wars may be fought not just across the Strait, but deep inside the mainland itself.
This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China has deployed a sophisticated new medium-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, believed to be the HQ-16F, to frontline military units stationed directly opposite Taiwan.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV aired footage on Friday (June 5) documenting the first live-fire and operational assessment of the weapon by the 73rd Group Army.
The strategic unit, headquartered in Xiamen, Fujian province, traveled thousands of kilometers to the northwestern Gobi Desert to conduct drills, during which a mobile-launched missile reportedly successfully intercepted an incoming target 50 kilometers away.
Designed to enhance the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command’s capabilities, the wingless, high-efficiency missile employs four tail fins, an integrated motor and advanced thrust vectoring to engage highly evasive, low-altitude or supersonic threats.
While official specifications remain classified, the system’s capabilities match or exceed those of its export variant, the HQ-16FE, which features an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar tracking range of over 250 kilometers.
The upgrade significantly bridges the qualitative gap with US-made Patriot PAC-2 and PAC-3 systems protecting Taiwan, introducing a directional fragmentation warhead to counter cross-strait defense networks.
The HQ-16F may have been developed in response to Taiwan’s emerging precision-strike capabilities against potential invasion staging areas.
Brennan Deveraux and Kyle Marcrum note in a February 2026 article for the US Army 75th Reserve Innovation Command that Taiwan’s US-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) could enable it to strike targets in China from a 300-kilometer ring around the island, possibly prompting the deployment of air defense assets such as the HQ-16F near invasion embarkation sites or command and control facilities within that area.
Deveraux and Marcrum note that the ATACMS threat could be very difficult for China to address, pointing out that the Taiwan Strait is just 180 kilometers wide and that Taiwan has a significant number of ATACMS missiles dispersed across many sites on the island. ATACMS missiles are also very difficult to intercept, given their Mach 3 terminal-phase speed, leaving air and missile defense systems little time to react.
Aside from ATACMS, Taiwan’s emerging deep strike capabilities may also be a concern for China. Taiwan has reportedly fielded cruise missiles, including the Hsiung Feng IIE. According to Missile Threat, its extended-range variants have a range of 1,200 kilometers, enough to reach targets deep in mainland China when launched from Taiwan.
The Tomahawk missile combines extended range with low-altitude flight to evade enemy air defenses. Mission planners can route Tomahawk attacks through known gaps in radar coverage, use indirect flight paths rather than predictable ballistic trajectories, fly at high subsonic speeds below radar detection thresholds and exploit terrain masking to reduce the likelihood of interception. The Hsiung Feng IIE may employ similar tactics against Chinese air defenses.
Aside from the Hsiung Feng IIE, China’s large landmass, often viewed as a source of strategic depth, may become a liability in an era of long-range precision strikes. Russia’s experience in Ukraine suggests that vast territory can be difficult to defend comprehensively, allowing attacks on critical military, industrial and energy infrastructure far from the front lines.
As with Russia, China may face a similar dilemma: its vast territory may make comprehensive air defense impractical, forcing it to concentrate air and missile defenses around critical military, political and strategic sites rather than providing nationwide coverage.
Taiwan’s long-range missiles – particularly the ATACMS and Hsiung Feng IIE – could pose a significant threat to China’s invasion staging areas and strategic rear, exploiting gaps in China’s air defenses to strike critical targets, inflict economic damage and impose psychological costs, including possible doubts about China’s leadership.
While conventional strikes on China’s invasion staging areas and targets deep within its territory could, in theory, raise public opposition to an invasion of Taiwan, they could also harden public sentiment against the self-governing island, thereby supporting a doubling down on military operations against Taiwan.
China’s concerns may extend beyond Taiwan’s growing strike capabilities to include advanced US conventional strike systems capable of threatening strategic targets deep inside the mainland. Beyond the missile threat posed by Taiwan, the HQ-16F may be used to defend against US threats to China’s nuclear arsenal and core leadership.
The June 2025 US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities likely underscored the possibility that the same US capabilities could be used against China in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. Seven US B-2 stealth bombers carrying 14 13,600-kilogram Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs struck three key underground nuclear sites in Iran – Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.
While it is unclear if the strikes actually destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities, they most likely inflicted serious damage on Iran’s underground centrifuge facilities and collapsed underground tunnels, possibly cutting off Iran’s access to its stockpile of fissile material and enrichment facilities.
In line with that, the HQ-16F may be used to defend sites such as the Hami nuclear silo field, with Reuters reporting in May 2026 that the facilities appear to be protected by camouflaged positions cut into the desert, probably housing air defense batteries.
Aside from protecting nuclear silo fields, the HQ-16F could also be used to defend critical leadership and command-and-control (C2) facilities, such as Beijing Military City, a massive underground complex designed as a command center and meant to protect China’s leadership from nuclear attack.
While the HQ-16F may have been designed to defend China’s strategic rear, leadership, critical infrastructure and nuclear arsenal, such conventional attacks could trigger nuclear retaliation.
Although China maintains a no-first-use (NFU) nuclear policy, it could abandon that if it deems that its ruling Communist Party regime or nuclear arsenal is threatened, or to stave off an impending catastrophic military defeat.
Yet even the HQ-16F may not fully solve China’s vulnerability to long-range precision strikes against its strategic rear. It may strengthen China’s defenses against emerging long-range strike threats, but its deployment also highlights a deeper reality: China increasingly expects that a conflict over Taiwan could extend well beyond the Strait and into the mainland itself.
Maintaining deterrence without crossing China’s nuclear red lines may therefore become one of the defining challenges of any future Taiwan crisis.
