Hypersonic Threats in IADS: The Game: The YJ-17 and Surface Strike Missiles 🚀

Commissar Binkov’s Latest Video

Commissar Binkov of Binkov's Battlegrounds made another banger of a video: “All 76 weapons at China 2025 military parade explained. 47 are brand new.”

Maybe not the catchiest title, but the video is super interesting and leaves a lot to nerd out over, even at the Wikipedia-INT level!

What I want to focus on for this post is the YJ-17! Officially revealed in the 3 Sep 25 parade, Wikipedia-INT gives us:

“The YJ-17 (Chinese: 鹰击-17; pinyin: Yīngjī-Yāoqī; lit. 'eagle strike 17') is a hypersonic anti-ship aeroballistic missile, featuring a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) warhead.”

Nasty!

In IADS: The Game? The Surface Strike Missile

Thinking about a unit that comes close in IADS: The Game, my first thought is the Surface Strike Missile unit card. Originally crafted as part of the Maritime Expansion Capabilities, it represents how scary surface-based threats can be for vessels.

With 2x 3d6 rolls, it’s nothing to shake a stick at! Driving right up to enemy surface units makes it versatile, even without organic Detection sensors. Add an Upgrade or two and you’ve got the ranges and dice rolls to threaten even high-defense surface targets.

Enter the Cruise Missile

What could really make this unit dangerous is attaching a Cruise Missile. Something I thought of too late to include in our Feb 25 commercial print is that the Surface Strike Missile should be able to swap out one of its missile tokens for a Ground-Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM).

A quick refresher on the Cruise Missile:

• Payload: Attach to Aircraft instead of 1x Air-to-Surface missile token. Before launch, Cruise Missile is detected along with Aircraft to which it is fixed. Once launched, Cruise Missileis a separate Air Unit. Cruise Missileis nolonger in play after impact.

• Precision Guidance: Must touch the unit card of a detected target to impact. Add 1d10 (one ten-sided die) to its 2d6 roll. Advanced SAMs, Advanced Mobile SAMs, Destroyers, and Distributed SAMS (must be in range of both Sensor/Shooter vs Aircraft) may launch Self-Defense Shots against impacting Cruise Missiles. Successful Self-Defense Shots prevent Cruise Missile impact and Attack roll.

• Fire-and-Forget: Continues flying each Action after shot, even if not Issued Orders.

So here's what you do:

1. Slap an Upgrade on the Surface Strike Missile and another Upgrade on a GLCM

2. Fire the upgraded GLCM

3. ?????

4. Roll 7d6 + 1d10 against a surface target at edge-of-the-battlespace range!

Final Thought

If you’re the YJ-17, I hope you roll all 1s, leaving you with a 8 — not even enough to destroy an HQ, let alone a steel-hulled Maritime unit. IADS: The Game doesn’t have a mechanic to unit cards accidentally blow themselves up in the launcher... but if it did... that. Make that to happen to the YJ-17s.

-- Ric

The capabilities described in this board game are generic and notional; they do not accurately reflect any real world capabilities. The views expressed on this page and in the game are those of the author and do not represent the official policy or positions of the United States Air Force, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government