[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.]
Apart from weapons covered by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, where China has a monopoly, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has other missiles in its arsenal that outperform their US counterparts. These include two supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, the YJ-12, with a range of 400km, and the YJ-18, which can hit targets up to 540km away.
To counter these missiles, the US relies on its subsonic, Harpoon anti-ship missile which has been modified to give it a maximum range of about 240km.
“That is a very big gap,” said Robert Haddick, a former US Marine Corps officer and now a visiting senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies based in Arlington, Virginia, who is also an adviser to the US Special Operations Command.
“China’s anti-ship missile capability exceeds those of the United States in terms of range, speed and sensor performance,” he said.
As part of a sweeping reorganization of the Chinese armed forces, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in late 2015 elevated the missile force to the level of a service alongside the army, navy and air force.
In a ceremony widely covered in the state-controlled media, the Second Artillery Corps was renamed the PLA Rocket Force. Two veterans of this force, General Wei Fenghe (魏鳳和) and General Zhang Shengmin (張升民), now sit on the CCP’s Central Military Commission, the supreme military control body that is chaired by Xi.
Another Rocket Force veteran, General Gao Jin (高津), is seen as a rising star of the Chinese military.
When the missile force was rebadged, Gao was appointed to head a new branch of the PLA, the Strategic Support Force, which is responsible for cyber, electronic and space warfare.
Gao has been a key figure in the transition of the Rocket Force from its origins as primarily a nuclear deterrent to its current dual role of both nuclear shield and spearhead of the PLA’s conventional strike capability, according to US and Chinese military analysts.
For the US and its regional allies, a top priority is to wrest back the lead in the range war.
Extra performance is being squeezed out of old US air and sea-launched missiles. Boeing is upgrading the Harpoon anti-ship missile. An anti-ship variant of Raytheon’s venerable Tomahawk land attack cruise missile — with a range in excess of 1,600km — is undergoing tests.
The US Navy is working to add range to carrier strike aircraft, and new weapons are in the pipeline.
Lockheed Martin said in December last year that it had delivered the first of its new, long-range anti-ship missiles to the US Air Force after a series of successful tests. This stealthy missile could also be deployed on warships.
Meanwhile, China continues to improve its firepower.
Two sets of satellite images on Google Earth, taken three years apart, show how China’s Rocket Force is testing its growing arsenal.
In one, the distinctive shape of a jet fighter is clearly visible on what appears to be a mock airstrip in a remote Chinese desert. The images, captured in mid-2013 over the far west of China, show the outline of a delta-wing aircraft at the southern end of the runway.
Images taken in late 2016 tell a different story. The wings and tail section are strewn at odd angles in a pile of wreckage.
“That plane looks like it has been shot at,” said Sean O’Connor, a former US Air Force intelligence analyst who now works as a principal research analyst at Jane’s, the defense information company.
The replica runway, pockmarked at one end with impact craters, is part of what O’Connor and other satellite imagery analysts have identified as a PLA missile test range.
Here and at other remote sites in western China, the PLA has been blasting missiles at what appear to be simulated targets of air bases, fuel depots, ports, ships, communication hubs, radar arrays and buildings.
Some of the mock-ups appear to mimic targets in Japan and Taiwan. Satellite images of the test range with the mock airstrip also suggest China is rehearsing strikes on the key US Navy base at Yokosuka, Japan, and other important facilities, according to a 2017 report from two US Navy officers, Commander Thomas Shugart and Commander Javier Gonzalez.
The two officers identified a mock target that appeared to be a mirror image of the inner harbor at Yokosuka base, home port for the US carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its battle group.
In their report for the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based research group, the two officers said the target had outlines of angled piers similar to those at Yokosuka and the shapes of three warships about the same size as the US destroyers based at the port.
The scenario Shugart and Gonzalez laid out evokes the darkest moment in US naval history. The mock-up, they wrote, could be interpreted as a rehearsal of a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack.
That paralyzing blow sank or damaged key elements of the US fleet, killed more than 2,300 Americans and plunged the US into World War II, but the Japanese failed to sink the US aircraft carriers normally based at Pearl Harbor because they were at sea.
In the animation at the recent Chinese airshow in Zhuhai, the “red force” does not make the same mistake. After red force missiles strike the blue force carrier, the animation concludes with the words: “The defensive counter-attack operation has gotten the expected results.”
This is part II of a two-part story. Part I appeared in yesterday’s edition. It is part of a continuing Reuters series “The China Challenge,” on the growing power of the Chinese military.
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