Global News

China’s powerful military is considered to be a master at concealing its intentions, but there is no secret about how it plans to destroy US aircraft carriers if rivalry becomes war.

At the biennial air show in Zhuhai in November last year, the biggest state-owned missile maker, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, screened an animation showing a hostile “blue force,” comprising an aircraft carrier, escort ships and strike aircraft, approaching “red force” territory.

On a giant screen, the animation showed a barrage of the Chinese company’s missiles launched from “red force” warships, submarines, shore batteries and aircraft wreaking havoc on the escort vessels around the carrier.

In a final salvo, two missiles plunge onto the flight deck of the carrier and a third slams into the side of the hull near the bow.

The fate of the ship is an unmistakable message to a US that has long dominated the globe from its mighty aircraft carriers and sprawling network of hundreds of bases

China’s military is now making giant strides toward replacing the US as the supreme power in Asia.

With the Pentagon distracted by almost two decades of costly war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has exploited a period of sustained budget increases and rapid technical improvement to build and deploy an arsenal of advanced missiles.

Many of these missiles are specifically designed to attack the aircraft carriers and bases that form the backbone of US military dominance in the region and which for decades have protected allies, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Across almost all categories of these weapons, based on land, loaded on strike aircraft or deployed on warships and submarines, China’s missiles rival or outperform their counterparts in the armories of the US and its allies, according to current and former US military officers with knowledge of PLA test launches, Taiwanese and Chinese military analysts, and technical specifications published in China’s state-controlled media.

China has also seized a virtual monopoly in one class of conventional missiles — land-based, intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles.

Under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement aimed at reducing the threat of nuclear conflict, the US and Russia are banned from deploying this class of missiles, with a range between 500km and 5,500km, but Beijing, unrestrained by the INF Treaty, is deploying them in massive numbers.

This includes so-called carrier killer missiles like the DF-21D, which can target aircraft carriers and other warships underway at sea at a range of up to 1,500km, according to Chinese and Western military analysts.

If effective, these missiles would give China a destructive capability no other military can boast.

China’s advantage in this class of missiles is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, despite US President Donald Trump’s decision in February to withdraw from the treaty in six months.

China is also making rapid strides in developing so-called hypersonic missiles, which can maneuver sharply and travel at five times the speed of sound (or even faster).

Currently, the US has no defenses against a missile like this, Pentagon officials said.

The Chinese Ministry of National Defense and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp did not respond to questions from reporters about Beijing’s missile capabilities

Source:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/04/30/2003714276