VIGIL CONSILIUM
Context, not headlines
PUBLIC ALPHAEvolving coverage — see the methodology and the corrections log.
Equipment Catalogue · Shared across conflicts

Conventional ballistic and cruise missile capability

Force Atlas / Equipment / Conventional ballistic and cruise missile capability

Recognition context, not a stat sheet. The catalogue covers major publicly documented systems relevant to the conflicts Vigil covers — not an exhaustive order of battle. No quantities, availability or current allocations are recorded. See the methodology.
Missile / precision strike

Conventional ballistic and cruise missile capability

The land-based conventional missile capability that features in every assessment of the regional balance — recorded here as a broad category only, with no targeting-relevant detail.

FieldedEvidence: Reported
Silhouette · not to scale

Record

FamilyDongfeng / Changjian families
VariantsDF-15; DF-16; DF-17; DF-21; DF-26
OriginChina
ManufacturerChinese state defence industry
EraSuccessive families fielded from the 1990s to the present.
Appears inTaiwan Strait

Conflict relevance

This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.

Taiwan Strait · Force Atlas

Operators

People's Republic of China · Primary operator

Battlefield role

Long-range conventional strike. This is the capability class most responsible for the shift in regional military assessments over the past two decades, because it complicates the operations of any force in the theatre.

Strengths

Large and diverse inventory across families and ranges, produced by a mature industrial base — widely assessed as the most consequential single element of Chinese military modernisation for this theatre.

Limitations

Entirely untested in conflict. Publicly reported corruption investigations reaching senior levels of the Rocket Force from 2023 raise real questions about readiness and procurement quality that outside analysts cannot resolve. Missile inventories are also finite in ways rarely reflected in popular analysis, and reload and sustainment capacity is not publicly known.

Branch & service operators

PartialConfidence: lowStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-20Sources: US Department of Defense — China Military Power Report · IISS Military Balance · CSIS China Power Project and ChinaPower analysisMethodology