[Stand Watch Listen]

How It Works: China's Antiship Ballistic Missile
Last week, U.S. Navy officials stated to a Japanese media that the Chinese are moving closer to deploying long-range missiles capable of targeting U.S. aircraft carriers. Here's how they work.

The most alarming weapon China is developing to deny the U.S. Navy access to the East and South China seas is the antiship ballistic missile—the first such missile able to change course to hit a moving aircraft carrier. Mounted on a mobile launch vehicle, an ASBM would rise in two stages, reach space and then use fins to maneuver at hypersonic speeds on its way back down. The warhead then glides along a level path to permit synthetic aperture radar, which processes multiple radar pulses to form a single picture to target the carrier. Finally, the warhead’s infrared seeker locates a carrier’s signature and closes in for the kill.

[DManA]

I don’t think it is worth going to war with China over Taiwan. But we don’t need to tell them that right now.

[And2TheRepublic]

We would lose. With gay soldiers and women soon to be in Combat Arms MOS’, we dont stand a chance. Also, the politcal correctness.

The beginning of OIF and Afghan are the last great wars we will ever fight. Until the political climate changes within the military, we can’t succeed. I see the change for the worse daily in the Army Infantry.

[brownsfan]

A war between China and the US?

Not as long as we can still buy white flags from them.

[vbmoneyspender]

China is an empire. China focuses on Taiwan not so much because it cares about Taiwan having broken away but because it cares very much about other existing provinces breaking away.

[vbmoneyspender]

China is an empire. China focuses on Taiwan not so much because it cares about Taiwan having broken away but because it cares very much about other existing provinces breaking away.

[Peter from Rutland]

I call bullsh*t.

[GonzoGOP]

Every report i have seen about the Chines ASBM say that it uses a nuke. If so using them would open up a can of worms that I don't think China would want to. What is the sense of taking Taiwan if you end up reducing the whole world to a radioactive cinder.

And there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war. If the Chinese nuked a CV battle group and killed tens of thousands of US sailors there would be a immediate call to hit back in kind. And even Obama couldn't hold that back. One nuke into the Three Gorges Dam and you would kill almost as many Chinese as there are Americans.

[mrmeyer]

It would escalate to nukes at some point. In college there were a fair number of foreign exchange students from Japan, S. Korea, and China. I had to interview them for a business class and discuss business culture in their countries.

The interview with the Chinese student got ugly when Taiwan came up, and she made the point quite adamantly that the US would not stop China from reclaiming Taiwan. The anger and hatred her eyes were something straight out of Orwell's 2 minute hate in 1984. It was as if a switch had been flipped. Perfectly calm to completely enraged.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

We need to be careful in overreacting to China.

It would be perfectly in line with 1000’s of years of Chinese foreign policy to rattle sabers and make trouble for the countries it boarders and do little but take advantage of whatever opportunities come along.

They could very easily cause us to over extend ourselves militarily and bankrupt ourselves financially preparing for asymmetrical threats.

[NTHockey]

Article says we have 11 carriers in 2015. Present plans are to REDUCE that to eight. If 0bambi is reelected, he won’t stop at eight and won’t lift a finger to deter our bankers. Neither the Nimitz nor any other carrier will be sent to protect Formosa.

However, if it is President Palin in the WH, the whole scenario gets changed.

[xenob]

We would let them have Taiwan... We don’t hold all the cards anymore. This wouldn’t be some ground battle with guys on camels and AK47’s. It would be a battle of generals pressing launch buttons.

[central_va]

Thank God for Free Trade™, without that we would be at war already.

[SamuraiScot]

The chance of war may be remote

I wouldn't say they're remote. I just finished reading the book Samurai! by Japanese WWII ace Saburo Sakai (who denounced the war and the Emperor post-war). The Japs were planning a war of conquest in Asia since before their 1905 war with Russia. They were determined to take over as much of the world as they could. Oddly, they were unprepared to pursue the vision. Not enough pilots, not enough planes, not enough production, and insane holes in their understanding of their potential adversaries, because despite their energetic spy network—including among the Nisei here—their mindset was proud and insular.

What was truly amazing was the blindness in the West to Japanese obsession and duplicity, and the level of our tactical stupidity before Pearl. Then we mobilized, re-armed, and ground them to a pulp.

The parallels with the Chicoms are glaringly obvious. They're putting commercial and military assets all over the world. I think they're only a few years away from launching their dream campaign. Like the WWII Jap leadership, they're running a totalitarian state, they're delusional, and they dream of world conquest. I think their leaders have the same bizarre psychological weakness—a complete lack of understanding of free will, which is fatal in a long war—but the war will be expensive.

It would be difficult for them if we take it to them first, especially by suborning some of their Western provinces.

[Last Dakotan]

Engaging China through trade as it was sold to the American public in the 1990's has been a complete failure.

How do I know this? Because I am reading what a war with China would look like in Popular Mechanics magazine in the year 2011.

China needs to be treated as we have all other communist adversaries. Isolated and armed against.

[GenXteacher]

One thing the article appears to have left out- we have nuclear subs, and it is not unlikely there would be one or two in the area. They could strike the Chinese, possibly with nuclear weapons, in such a scenario, assuming we had a President with any spine in 2015.

[wbarmy]

We have aerial, satellite, and humint resources which would inform us as the Chinese ramp up their military posture to do this. It cannot be done in an information vacuum, even trying to would alert the US. And there are systems in place which could respond to a large scale cruise missile launching.

The Taiwanese have set up a very good, in depth defense posture which could stop a lot of those cruise missiles, something that the US has.

Having said that, no system is 100%, but the Chinese have to throw a lot up because they know that most will be shot down or FAIL. They still have not got the system working at operational levels which can provide any level of comfort to the leaders.

These are not rosy projections. We have defenses, they are trying to overcome them. Once they feel that they have an acceptable edge, they will force the issue. Our job, is to keep raising the bar, so that an acceptable edge is never reached.

[Rooivalk]

Regarding the Chinese DF-21D the so called "Carrier killer" there is no evidence that it can work. The Russians had their own of version of an anti carrier ballistic missile named the SS-NX-13 which had to use a nuclear war head to compensate for its inaccuracy. The Chinese claim that their anti-carrier missile would score a direct hit on the carrier but without everything going right in a very complex kill chain, the Chinese would miss by miles the carrier.

All America has to do is do what we did to the Russians in 1981 as Nimitz class carriers operated off Norway and in the Barents Sea under the noses of Russian air and naval forces who went crazy trying to find the carrier. This You Tube video explains how the Chinese missile would operate under perfect and ideal conditions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLKZDVcBt8

[Rooivalk]

This statement, from a Chinese military board (China Defense), is important to understand in the total scheme of things. Keep this in mind as the Chinese rattle their sabras:

"....Acquiring ASBM would no doubt bolster the PLA's ability to deny US sea power...

But "preserving" an ASBM capability is another story. Just as the US relies on technological assets to keep its military strength, the Chinese ASBM, along with other systems, are increasingly reliant on sophisticated high tech electronic systems that are likely to become victims of enemy strikes: radar, satellites, C4I infrastructure, launch sites/vehicles, air bases from which surveillance aircraft will operate from, etc. The destruction of any one of these components could jeapordise the whole ASBM capability. While the ASBM is meant to deliver a punch before the USN CVBG gets within striking distance of China's coast, the US still has a number of ways to knock out Chinese ASBM systems before they have a chance to engage: B-2 bombers with PGMs, SSN launched SLCMs, SOFs deployed from SSNs, conventional air forces based in Guam, Japan and South Korea, and even calling on the ROCAF/ROCN to assist in seeking and destroying ASBM infrastructure. If the ASBM is intended to be a trump card for the PLA, the PLA must be prepared to defend the ASBM's supporting infrastructure. Space assets are a bit harder to preserve. Just as the Chinese could take out US satellites, the US has just as much, if not a greater, capability in reciprocating against Chinese space-based systems. ...."

[naturalized]

Stuxnet is not the only virus that the US and the Israelis jointly developed, and uranium centrifuges are not the only computerized targets of such viruses. This story is about the Navy posturing for allocation of resources.

[Lazamataz]

No discussion of directed energy weapons?

You think we're not fielding that stuff?