Photographer: Greg Baker / AFP via Getty Images
Photographer: Greg Baker / AFP via Getty Images
China’s latest film launched in China into the world’s most militant body serves as a warning to two major U.S. targets: airspace and regional bases.
The rockets launched into the South China Sea on Wednesday included the DF-21D and DF-26B, the South China Morning Post reported, and named a person close to the People’s Liberation Army. Those weapons are central to China’s strategy to deter all military action off its east coast by threatening to destroy the region’s most important sources of US power projection.
“China is signaling to the US, its allies and partners that China has a response to the strikes of American aircraft carriers, a response that is always available and does not depend on deployment schedules,” he said. Carl Schuster, an adjunct faculty member of the Diploma and Military Science Program of the University of Hawaii Pacific and a former Director of Operations at the Joint Intelligence Center of the Pacific. “In fact, China says, ‘If the US puts two carriers in the South China Sea, we’ll send aircraft killer missiles there.'”
The launches show the US the growing cost of any armed conflict, with a high profile reminder of China’s growing arsenal of ballistic missiles at medium and intermediate space. This challenges American military superiority in Asia for the first time since World War II. President Xi Jinping unveiled the new PLA Rocket Force as part of a military parade in October, demonstrating the possibility that researchers at the University of Sydney warned could wipe out U.S. bases during the “opening hours of a conflict.”
A U.S. defense official who asked not to be identified told Bloomberg News that China fired four medium-range ballistic missiles this week in a series of military exercises. They land in the sea between China’s southern Hainan island and the disputed Paracel chain near Vietnam, the official said, not far from where U.S. carriers have been conducting exercises in recent weeks to overturn the Trump administration’s decision. affirm to challenge the sovereignty of Beijing.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense reiterated its claim that the exercises on Thursday were not aimed at one nation, without mentioning the launch of the rocket. However, ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Wu Qian accused “some American politicians” of trying to provoke a conflict between the two peoples, and told a briefing in Beijing that China “was not afraid.”
Within reach
China’s missile arsenal is now handling most of the Pacific’s allies
Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation and the Office of the Secretary of Defense
The tests appeared intended for consumption in the US, rather than a domestic audience, with coverage on the country’s highly censored internet largely limited to foreign media messages. Earlier this week, China protested the flight of a U.S. U-2 spy plane at the training zone in the East China Sea, presumably to gain intelligence about the country’s capabilities.
“The goal is to test the capabilities of the troops,” said Li Jie, a Beijing-based naval expert who stopped short before confirming the missile test. “You could say it sends a warning to the US because the US has increased its military activities in the South China Sea.”
While the two nuclear powers have plenty of incentives to prevent a clash, the risk of escalation increases as the US and its allies try to push back against a more assertive Beijing. The U.S. has conducted a series of military exercises around the region in recent weeks and approved a landmark yacht sale to Taiwan – against the backdrop of a national election, President Donald Trump has tried to focus on China.
The recent exercises of the US Navy in the South China Sea are recorded joint operations by the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike groups last month and separate exercises by the Reagan this month. Those movements follow Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on July 13th announcement clarifying US legal opposition to Chinese claims over most of a vital lane, parts of which are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
China has launched at least one other DF-26 rocket in recent weeks, according to the Communist Party’s Global Times characterized as a response to U.S. transportation operations. The paper had previously unleashed its “carrier-killer” missiles on Twitter – drawing a lack of lightning from the U.S. Navy, which remarked that the warships were “still there” after all.
While China still has the potential to sink a moving warship, the cost of losing a $ 10 billion aircraft transfer, the troops and hardware on board – and all the U.S. military prestige they represent – would not be measurable. That threat causes Pentagon planners to consider less conspicuous ways to extend force, with an internal Department of Defense study recommending that the country’s carrier fleet be reduced from 11 to nine, Defense News reported in April.
The PLA’s missile arsenal is one of the many factors driving the US’s shifting security stance in Asia, with the Pentagon. cycling on nuclear B-1 bombers to and from Guam, where they are more vulnerable to attack. Concerns about the threat also contributed to the US decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Forces Intermediate-Range Treaty with Russia and seek three-way arms talks with China.
Even before this week’s launches, China had quietly stepped up ballistic missile testing, in an apparent attempt to measure its operational capabilities. The country fired more than 100 ballistic missiles last year, more than three times North Korea’s record, Kyodo News reported in February, citing people familiar with the matter.
Closed and loaded
China’s fleet of rocket launchers is slowly growing
Source: Office of the US Secretary of Defense, United States Studies Center
China possesses what former Pacific commander Harry Harris called “the largest and most diverse missile force in the world,” with many different weapons in development. The DF-21D can travel more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles), while the DF-26 can deliver an estimated 4,000 kilometers of spearheads, far enough to reach Guam.
There are “real questions” about whether the bearer-killers of China actually work, he said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow from Stanton with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The latest tests can give the US a chance to better understand its performance.
“The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has a busy test schedule and this was probably operational training,” Panda said. “But surely it will be a reminder to people in Washington that China’s army continues to modernize and can deny access to the U.S. Navy in parts of the Asia-Pacific.”
– Assisted by Brendan Scott, Philip Heijmans, Jing Li, Lucille Liu, Jon Herskovitz, and Adrian Leung
(Updates with response from the Chinese Defense Ministry in sixth paragraph.)
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