China is exploring the use of ballistic missiles for anti-access/sea denial missions.
No explanation of this is given in the report.
Back in the spring, in an email conversation concerning my Taiwan invasion scenario with someone who was in a position to know, I was told that the Pentagon was looking into Chinese efforts to use ballistic missiles against moving targets at sea. This was a follow-up to Soviet efforts that really didn't amount to anything.
But advances in technology meant that the emailer believed that the Chinese could conceivably blanket a box at sea with chemical warheads delivered by ballistic missiles that a carrier or expeditionary strike group could not avoid. Though I protested that such an attack could not generate the density of chemicals that could affect our people, I was assured that the effect would be to put the carrier out of commission long enough to do some good for the Chinese.
I am still skeptical that the Chinese could deliver a cloud of poison gas that a carrier would run through and disable it by forcing decontamination, but it is interesting that a research angle gets summarized into one bullet point.
This reason gives another use for all those missiles the Chinese are building and pointing east in the general direction of Taiwan.
It also provides another reason to have ships with anti-ballistic missile defenses. Even if the immediate worry is North Korea, even after North Korea implodes we will need to guard against the Chinese managing to do something with this angle. Who knows, maybe an EMP attack blanketing attack could damage our carriers. I honestly don't know how well shielded they are.
