New missile gap leaves U.S. scrambling to counter China

China’s powerful military is considered to be a master at concealing its intentions. But there is no secret about how it plans to destroy American aircraft carriers if rivalry becomes war.

At November’s biennial air show in the southern city of Zhuhai, the biggest state-owned missile maker, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Ltd, screened an animation showing a hostile “blue force,” comprising an aircraft carrier, escort ships and strike aircraft, approaching “red force” territory.

On a giant screen, the animation showed a barrage of the Chinese company’s missiles launched from “red force” warships, submarines, shore batteries and aircraft wreaking havoc on the escort vessels around the carrier. In a final salvo, two missiles plunge onto the flight deck of the carrier and a third slams into the side of the hull near the bow.

The fate of the ship is an unmistakable message to an America that has long dominated the globe from its mighty aircraft carriers and sprawling network of hundreds of bases. China’s military is now making giant strides toward replacing the United States as the supreme power in Asia. With the Pentagon distracted by almost two decades of costly war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has exploited a period of sustained budget increases and rapid technical improvement to build and deploy an arsenal of advanced missiles.

Many of these missiles are specifically designed to attack the aircraft carriers and bases that form the backbone of U.S. military dominance in the region and which for decades have protected allies including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Across almost all categories of these weapons, based on land, loaded on strike aircraft or deployed on warships and submarines, China’s missiles rival or outperform their counterparts in the armories of the United States and its allies, according to current and former U.S. military officers with knowledge of PLA test launches, Taiwanese and Chinese military analysts, and technical specifications published in China’s state-controlled media.

China has also seized a virtual monopoly in one class of conventional missiles – land-based, intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles.

Under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement aimed at reducing the threat of nuclear conflict, the United States and Russia are banned from deploying this class of missiles, with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (3,418 miles). But Beijing, unrestrained by the INF Treaty, is deploying them in massive numbers.

This includes so-called carrier killer missiles like the DF-21D, which can target aircraft carriers and other warships underway at sea at a range of up to 1,500 kilometers, according to Chinese and Western military analysts. If effective, these missiles would give China a destructive capability no other military can boast. China’s advantage in this class of missiles is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision in February to withdraw from the treaty in six months.

China is also making rapid strides in developing so-called hypersonic missiles, which can maneuver sharply and travel at five times the speed of sound (or even faster). Currently, the United States has no defenses against a missile like this, according to Pentagon officials.

China’s Ministry of National Defense and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation did not respond to questions from Reuters about Beijing’s missile capabilities. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the Pentagon had no comment.

China’s growing missile arsenal hasn’t yet been proven in a real-world clash, and some Chinese officials play down their advances. But under the Trump administration, Washington has come to view China as a rival determined to displace the United States in Asia. This modern-day missile gap, the administration believes, is emerging as one of the biggest dangers to American military supremacy in Asia since the end of the Cold War. The Pentagon is now scrambling for new weapons and strategies to counter the PLA’s rocket arsenal.

“We know that China has the most advanced ballistic missile force in the world,” said James Fanell, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former senior intelligence officer with the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “They have the capacity to overwhelm the defensive systems we are pursuing.”

Fanell was sidelined by the Pentagon ahead of his 2015 retirement, after warning about the Chinese build-up at a time when President Barack Obama was seeking cooperation with Beijing. Today, Pentagon policy hews more closely to his views that China intends to displace the United States as Asia’s dominant power.

Chinese military brass agree they can now keep American carriers at bay. Six people in China interviewed by Reuters, including retired PLA officers and a person with ties to the Beijing leadership, said China’s enhanced missile capability was a great leveler and would serve to deter the United States from getting too close to Chinese shores.

“We cannot defeat the United States at sea,” a retired PLA colonel said in an interview. The United States has 11 aircraft carriers and China has just two. “But we have missiles that specifically target aircraft carriers to stop them from approaching our territorial waters if there were conflict.”

A person with ties to the Chinese leadership who once served in the military had a similar message: “If U.S. aircraft carriers come too close to our coastlines in a conflict, our missiles can destroy them.” […]