High-tech missiles made in China threaten American aircraft carriers (Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy)

24 May 2010 2

Strategic confrontation between the United States and China also takes place on the technological front. The introduction of new weapons by Beijing potentially reduces or even completely negates the leadership of American aircraft carriers. This leadership was established at the end of the Second World War as an armament system allowing for global control.

Anxiety in the Pentagon. Officially announced a new threat from China, Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the Pacific fleetIn his testimony to Congress on March 23 of this year, he expressed concern about the fact that China is developing and testing a ballistic homing rocket medium-range ASBM (anti-ship ballistic missile) non-nuclear warhead, specifically designed to attack US aircraft carriers.

The range of 2 is thousands of kilometers. It appears that we are talking about the D version of the Dong Feng-21 ballistic missile, which has a range of up to 2000 kilometers, which is enough to control the waters of the South China Sea, which in principle could become a theater of military operations between Washington and Beijing, especially in the event of a conflict over control of Taiwan.

US Navy in the Asian sector of the Pacific. American aircraft carriers have so far been the most important strategic barrier against Chinese threats to Taipei and against the expansion of the water area controlled by China, which in recent years has transformed its fleet from coastal to ocean. Increasingly, Chinese ships are approaching the Japanese shores and are reaching the Indian Ocean using bases provided by Burma. A new submarine base, built on Hainan Island, followed closely by American spy ships, led to an arms race at sea in all southeast Asian countries.

Beijing is thinking about aircraft carriers. China intends to have aircraft carriers in the future and for many years has been studying this type of ship “Varyag”, acquired in Russia. But for many years Beijing will not be able to resist American supremacy at sea. The US has 11 aircraft carriers with a total displacement of thousands of tons in 100, five of them are in the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the creation of ballistic missiles against ships supplied with conventional warheads of high explosive force instead of nuclear ones undermines the existing balance of power, and in the future will reduce the value of aircraft carriers.

China's advanced technology. According to Andrea Tani, who wrote a report on the subject for the online magazine Defense Analysis, the Chinese have equipped the Dong Feng D missiles with an autopilot system that can hit moving targets such as aircraft carriers, whose detection is guaranteed by surveillance satellites and coastal radars, which have a very long range. They are already in the Chinese coastal zone. “Today there are already 38 of them, and in 2014 there will be 65, 11 of which will be used at sea. On March 5, three Yaogan IX satellites were launched from the Zhuchuan test site, which are directly related to the ASBM program. They appear to be an exact copy of the American White Cloud NOSS satellites, and perhaps they are. The satellites are equipped with general-purpose radars and infrared sensors to detect ships, as well as electronic devices to intercept and analyze the signals they send in order to more accurately determine their coordinates,” Tani writes.

Ultra fast rockets. The missiles’ high speed, eight times the speed of sound, makes them difficult for carrier air and missile defense systems and their escorts to intercept, and launching large numbers of missiles can overwhelm the defenses. An aircraft carrier hit by one or two ballistic missiles may not sink, but it will certainly lose its combat capability. It would be premature to assess the actual operational performance of ASBMs, but the very news of their development confirms the seriousness of Beijing’s strategic challenge. Washington is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its global military superiority, not to mention the risk that this technology will fall into the hands of other ballistic missile states such as Iran and North Korea.