How Much Help Has Ukraine Provided China on its Ballistic Missile Program?

Here's What You Need to Remember: As China continues to modernize its ICBM fleet, it begs the question: how much help is Ukraine providing, willingly and unwillingly? China has often been particularly keen on this knowledge, acquiring Ukrainian help in designing their first phased-array radar system. As China continues to modernize its ICBM fleet, it begs the question: how much help is Ukraine providing, willingly and unwillingly? The article states that Sino-Ukrainian cooperation on civil space ventures, specifically the RD-120 engine and the RD-9 attitude control engine could be used to improve the DF-5B ICBM. However, one telling aspect that could belie significant Ukrainian aid or input into the Chinese missile program is the commonality between their recent missile systems. While China has developed common land/sea missile pairs before in the DF-31/JL-2 and the DF-21/JL-1, the JL-1, and DF-21 are two-stage designs, and the DF-31/JL-2 were originally designed for single warheads, not MIRVs-although the capability was added later. Given all the different vectors through which rocket and missile technology are flowing from Ukraine to China, it's reasonable to say that Ukraine has provided considerable aid to the Chinese ballistic missile program. While the new generation of Chinese missiles may not be exact analogues of the ones Ukraine designed some decades ago, the continual flow of Ukrainian state secrets regarding missiles, the immigration of Ukrainian engineers and scientists, and the cooperation between Ukraine and China on civilian rockets all result in a situation where modern Chinese ICBMs probably incorporate Ukrainian know-how in one aspect or another.