This is new:
The Chinese military has deployed its new anti-ship ballistic missile along its southern coast facing Taiwan, the Pentagon’s top military intelligence officer said today.
The missile, designated the DF-21D, is one of a “growing number of conventionally armed” new weapons China is deploying to the region, adding to more than 1,200 short-range missiles opposite the island democracy, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, said in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Keeping our carriers away from Taiwan would be a key Chinese objective in an effort to invade and conquer Taiwan.
We are seeking to counter it:
Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, warned in his January 2012 annual report that the Navy lacked a target needed to check its defenses against the DF-21D. The Navy had an “immediate need” for a test missile able to replicate the DF-21D’s trajectory, Gilmore said.
Last July, Gilmore told Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in a memo that testing to evaluate the new carriers’ “ability to withstand shock and survive in combat” would be postponed until after the Kennedy is built, and may not be completed for seven years.
Taking a hit from a missile plunging in at such high speed--even without a warhead--is going to hurt. Don't we have any old Pershing theater missiles that could be used to test our missile defenses and estimate killing power?
Or to see if our Aegis ship-based anti-missiles or Army Patriot or THAAD anti-missiles can protect our carriers?
Breaking the kill chain was also mentioned. I wrote about that here.
I'd also like to know if we could hide from the DF-21D if we deployed our carriers close to Taiwan off their east coast. Can we sail close enough to be screened by the land clutter? Does land clutter matter any more?
This is just one more weapon in an array of land-based air power (including cruise missiles) and naval long-range weapons that we have to penetrate to keep China from throwing a screen to the east of our allies in the western Pacific to buy time for China to achieve objectives behind that screen. But it is a new one, so of more interest.
