Chinese missile could shift Pacific power balance

Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. That can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas.

China may soon put an end to that.

U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 3,000 km (1,900 mi).

Analysts say final testing of the missile could come as soon as the end of this year, though questions remain about how fast China will be able to perfect its accuracy to the level needed to threaten a moving carrier at sea.

The weapon, a version of which was displayed last year in a Chinese military parade, could revolutionize China's role in the Pacific balance of power, seriously weakening Washington's ability to intervene in any potential conflict over Taiwan or North Korea.

It could also deny U.S. ships safe access to international waters near China's 11,200-mile (18,000-kilometer) -long coastline. While a nuclear bomb could theoretically sink a carrier, assuming its user was willing to raise the stakes to that levels, the conventionally armed Dong Feng 21D's uniqueness is in its ability to hit a powerfully defended moving target with pin-point precision.

Funded by annual double-digit increases in the defense budget for almost every year of the past two decades, the Chinese navy has become Asia's largest and has expanded beyond its traditional mission of retaking Taiwan to push its sphere of influence deeper into the Pacific and protect vital maritime trade routes.

"The Navy has long had to fear carrier-killing capabilities," said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the nonpartisan, Washington-based Center for a New American Security.

"The emerging Chinese antiship missile capability, and in particular the DF 21D, represents the first post-Cold War capability that is both potentially capable of stopping our naval power projection and deliberately designed for that purpose."

Background - Chinese Military Seeks to Extend Its Naval Power

Backgroung - Beijing learning about soft power

Background - China Mech

Background - U.S. Says Settling South China Sea Disputes ‘Pivotal’

Setting the stage for a possible conflict, Beijing has grown increasingly vocal in its demands for the U.S. to stay away from the wide swaths of ocean — covering much of the Yellow, East and South China seas — where it claims exclusivity.

It strongly opposed plans to hold U.S.-South Korean war games in the Yellow Sea off the northeastern Chinese coast, saying the participation of the USS George Washington supercarrier, with its 1,092-foot (333-meter) flight deck and 6,250 personnel, would be a provocation because it put Beijing within striking range of U.S. F-18 warplanes.

Background - China Deploys Bomber Coverage Of Korea And Taiwan From Shandong Peninsula

The carrier instead took part in maneuvers held farther away in the Sea of Japan.

U.S. officials deny Chinese pressure kept it away, and say they will not be told by Beijing where they can operate. "We reserve the right to exercise in international waters anywhere in the world,"

Rear Adm. Daniel Cloyd, who headed the U.S. side of the exercises, said aboard the carrier during the maneuvers, which ended last week. But the new missile could undermine that policy.

"China can reach out and hit the U.S. well before the U.S. can get close enough to the mainland to hit back," said Toshi Yoshihara, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He said U.S. ships have only twice been that vulnerable — against Japan in World War II and against Soviet bombers in the Cold War.

Carrier-killing missiles "could have an enduring psychological effect on U.S. policymakers, It underscores more broadly that the U.S. Navy no longer rules the waves as it has since the end of World War II. The stark reality is that sea control cannot be taken for granted anymore."

Yoshihara said the weapon is causing considerable consternation in Washington, though — with attention focused on land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — its implications haven't been widely discussed in public. Analysts note that while much has been made of China's efforts to ready a carrier fleet of its own, it would likely take decades to catch U.S. carrier crews' level of expertise, training and experience.

But Beijing does not need to match the U.S. carrier for carrier. The Dong Feng 21D, smarter, and vastly cheaper, could successfully attack a U.S. carrier, or at least deter it from getting too close.

Background - China Building A Pair of Aircraft Carrier

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned of the threat in a speech last September at the Air Force Association Convention...

"When considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the U.S. symmetrically — fighter to fighter or ship to ship — and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options."

Gates said China's investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, along with ballistic missiles, "could threaten America's primary way to project power" through its forward air bases and carrier strike groups.

Background - Congress warned of Chinese cyber, space threats

Background - Cyberattack Gets Worse

Background - China’s Cyber-Militia

The Pentagon has been worried for years about China getting an anti-ship ballistic missile. The Pentagon considers such a missile an "anti-access," weapon, meaning that it could deny others access to certain areas.

The Air Force's top surveillance and intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. David Deptula, told reporters this week that China's effort to increase anti-access capability is part of a worrisome trend.

He did not single out the DF 21D, but said: "While we might not fight the Chinese, we may end up in situations where we'll certainly be opposing the equipment that they build and sell around the world."

Questions remain over when — and if — China will perfect the technology; hitting a moving carrier is no mean feat, requiring state-of-the-art guidance systems, and some experts believe it will take China a decade or so to field a reliable threat. Others, however, say final tests of the missile could come in the next year or two.

Former Navy commander James Kraska, a professor of international law and sea power at the U.S. Naval War College, recently wrote a controversial article in the magazine Orbis outlining a hypothetical scenario set just five years from now in which a Deng Feng 21D missile with a penetrator warhead sinks the USS George Washington.

That would usher in a "new epoch of international order in which Beijing emerges to displace the United States." While China's Defense Ministry never comments on new weapons before they become operational, the DF 21D — which would travel at 10 times the speed of sound and carry conventional payloads.

A pseudonymous article posted on Xinhuanet, website of China's official news agency, imagines the U.S. dispatching the George Washington to aid Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

The Chinese would respond with three salvos of DF 21D, the first of which would pierce the hull, start fires and shut down flight operations, the article says. The second would knock out its engines and be accompanied by air attacks. The third wave, the article says, would "send the George Washington to the bottom of the ocean."

(Dong-Feng) DF-21D (CSS-5 Mod-4(NATO))
Anti-ship ballistic missile
Dong-Feng means "East Wind"

Originally developed for strategic purposes, the DF-21's later variants were designed for both nuclear and conventional missions. As well as a nuclear warhead of around 300kt, it is thought that high explosive, submunition and chemical warheads are also available.

The latest DF-21D was said to be the world's first and only anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). The DF-21 has also been developed into space launcher and anti-satellite/anti-missile weapon carrier.

The US Department of Defense has stated that China is developing a conventionally-armed high hypersonic land-based anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) based on the DF-21, with a range of up to 3,000 km (1,900 mi).

This would be the world's first and only ASBM and the world's first weapons system capable of targeting a moving aircraft carrier strike group from long-range, land-based mobile launchers.

These would combine manoeuvrable reentry vehicles (MaRVs) with some kind of terminal guidance system. Such a missile may have been tested in 2005-6, and the launch of the Jianbing-5/YaoGan-1 and Jianbing-6/YaoGan-2 satellites would give the Chinese targeting information from SAR and visual imaging respectively.

The upgrades would greatly enhance China's ability to conduct sea-denial operations to prevent US carriers from intervention in the Taiwan Strait.

China has recently launched a series of satellites to support its ASBM efforts

Yaogan-VII electro-optical satellite - 9 December 2009

Yaogan-VIII synthetic aperture radar satellite - 14 December 2009

Yaogan-IX Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) constellation (3 satellites in formation) - 5 March 2010.

U.S. Says Settling South China Sea Disputes ‘Pivotal’

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said resolving territorial disputes off China’s southern coast is “a leading diplomatic priority,” signaling her intention to intercede in a region claimed in full by the Chinese government.

Ending disagreements in the South China Sea “is pivotal to regional stability” and ensuring “unimpeded commerce,” Clinton told the 27-member Asean Regional Forum in Hanoi today, according to a State Department transcript. She later met with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said there were “very, very open, sometimes heated discussion” during the forum on issues including the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula.

The Chinese government considers the entire South China Sea as its own, dismissing rival claims to islands such as the Spratlys, and is building a blue-water fleet to project power beyond its own borders.

“China’s assertiveness has caused anxieties in the region,” said Carlyle A. Thayer, professor of politics at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. Countries around Asia “are quite happy the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting.”

‘Core Interest’ Status

Raising the South China Sea to the level of a “core interest” would put it on the same standing as Taiwan, which China views as a breakaway province to be reunited by force, if necessary. China cut military links with the U.S. in January in protest at arms sales to Taiwan, a move Defense Secretary Robert Gates said “makes little sense” and threatens regional stability.

China doesn’t see U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as “normal,” General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said in Singapore last month.

China has also protested at military exercises by the U.S. off the coast of Korea that Gates said are aimed at deterring further acts of aggression by North Korea after the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

In a show of the U.S.’ strategic commitment to the region, Clinton and Gates, together with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior defense officials met in Seoul on June 21 on the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

U.S. Naval Force

The 97,000-ton USS George Washington and three destroyers arrived in the country the same day, ahead of military exercises due next week that will involve F-22 stealth fighter-bombers and hundreds of other aircraft, ships and thousands of U.S. and Korean personnel.

The U.S. drills mask a hidden aim to “pressurize and contain other big powers by force of arms in the region,” the state-run Korea Central News Agency said July 21. North Korea denies any involvement in the sinking and today accused the U.S. of “gunboat diplomacy” in sending the Washington to the region.

“There will be physical response against the steps imposed by the United States militarily,” Ri Tong Il, an official with North Korea’s delegation to the Asean Security Forum, told reporters in Hanoi today.

China, North Korea’s main ally and source of economic support, is “firmly opposed” to any threatening foreign military activities in waters off its shores, the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website. It has so far refused to join international condemnation of North Korea for the ship sinking.

Claims Disputed

The Chinese government formally disputed the claims of Vietnam and Malaysia to part of the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands when it submitted a map to the United Nations last year asserting ownership over most of the sea. Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan also lay claim to all or part of the island chain, which may contain oil and gas reserves.

China has beefed up its military over the past decade, enhancing the capability to deter U.S. ships and enforce territorial claims off its shores. Last year, Chinese fishing boats harassed two U.S. naval vessels in the South China Sea, where American forces have patrolled since World War II.

Chinese officials told U.S. counterparts in March they consider the sea a “core interest” on par with Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, Kyodo News reported on July 3, citing unidentified officials.

U.S.-Vietnam Cooperation

Clinton yesterday discussed military cooperation with Vietnam and Defense Secretary Robert Gates restored ties with special forces in Indonesia. The two countries border the South China Sea, which contains sea corridors vital to world trade.

“The United States supports a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion,” Clinton said. “We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant.”

Asean foreign ministers are negotiating an agreement with China on a code of conduct in the sea to build on a 2002 accord that called for disputes to be resolved peacefully. Ministers hope the deal can be concluded by year’s end, Asean’s Surin said yesterday. Open shipping lanes in the sea are “really the lifeline of our commerce, of our transport for all of us,” Surin told reporters in Hanoi. China, Japan and South Korea “recognize that 85 to 90 percent of their energy source comes either from or through Southeast Asia,” he said.