The Chinese military is using mock-ups of US aircraft carriers at a weapons-testing range in a remote western desert, new satellite imagery shows, indicating that the People’s Liberation Army is focused on neutralizing a key tool of US power.
Satellite images depict targets in the shape of a carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers at a testing facility in the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang, the news Web site of the US Naval Institute reported.
Both types of vessels are deployed by the US 7th Fleet, which patrols the Western Pacific, including the waters around Taiwan.
Photo: AP
The images were taken last month by Maxar Technologies Inc, a US firm with more than 80 company-built satellites in orbit.
The facility also has two rectangular targets about 75m long that are mounted on rails, Maxar said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News yesterday.
The site is clear to satellites, a sign that Beijing is trying to show Washington what its missile forces can do.
In August last year, the Chinese military executed a coordinated test launch of the “carrier killer” DF-21D missiles into the South China Sea, an action that the former head of the US Indo-Pacific Command US Admiral Phil Davidson later told a Senate panel was intended as an “unmistakable message.”
The DF-21D is central to China’s strategy of deterring military action off its eastern coast by threatening to destroy the major sources of US power projection in the region, its carrier battle groups.
The then-head of Naval Intelligence Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett told reporters in January 2011 that the Pentagon had underestimated the speed at which China developed and was fielding the DF-21D.
China-US ties have been quietly improving in the past few months, but the two nations are sparring over Taiwan and alarm has been growing in Washington over Beijing’s nuclear arsenal.
In a sign of how heated the rhetoric over Taiwan has become, Chinese state media last week had to tame online speculation over a possible war.
The Pentagon has voiced concern that China is expanding its nuclear weapons capabilities more rapidly than previously believed. Many in the US military establishment are also concerned about China’s investments in advanced missile technology, with US General Mark Milley, the top uniformed military officer, on Oct. 27 calling China’s reported hypersonic weapons system tests “very concerning.”
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