A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber. (U.S. Air Force/Getty Images)
In a potential conflict in the South China Sea, China and the United States are engaged in a military power race to gain a critical advantage. Recently, U.S. Defense Department officials pointed out that the Chinese regime is too confident in its so-called “carrier killer” – the DF-26 ballistic missile.
According to the Washington Examiner, the Chinese Communist Party has tailored a series of new military capabilities to defeat the U.S. military, and perhaps nothing has bothered U.S. strategists more in recent years than the DF-26 ballistic missile that Beijing has been touting.
The Communist Party media have for years touted the so-called “super lethality” of the “carrier killer,” a missile that is said to be located deep within Chinese territory but has the ability to strike U.S. positions thousands of miles away. But U.S. Defense Department officials say the Chinese regime should not be overconfident about this new weapon.
“The goal of the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy is very clearly to upset the balance of power to the point that …… the Americans will not be able to intervene because the U.S. Navy will no longer have the ability to do anything,” said the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank. Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) senior fellow Gregory B. Poling said recently.
This week, at an event of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a nonprofit intelligence organization, Vice Admiral Jeffrey Trussler, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare and director of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Vice Adm. Jeffrey Trussler, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, said with a laugh, “That’s probably not how we’re going to win the next war.”
This confident posture by the U.S. military has also caught the attention of the Chinese Communist military establishment. “What Trussler is saying is that the U.S. is strong enough to deal with the anti-ship missile threat from China,” Song Zhongping, a former Communist military academy instructor, told the South China Morning Post on Friday, adding that “the U.S. is emphasizing that threat and it will further strengthen its defense against Chinese [Communist Party] missiles “
“The Chinese Communist Party is pouring a lot of money into, essentially, circling their shores in the South China Sea with anti-ship missile capabilities,” Trassler said, “and when looking at these, these troubling developments, they may be aimed at the U.S. Navy and developed specifically for the U.S. Navy, so we’re very closely watching them very closely.”
Poling, a senior fellow at CSIS, further explained, “We made a decision after World War II that we would be better off defending our national security interests through this coalition network and forward deployed bases so that we never have to face an adversary in the Pacific again.” Poling said any nation believes in the credibility of the U.S. alliance system.
In addition to the missile defense exercises, U.S. military officials recently highlighted the ability of U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers to bomb Communist Chinese forces on just 28 hours’ notice. U.S. analysts say there is still more work to be done.
Trassler’s statement of confidence in U.S. military capabilities is a potentially important diplomatic signal to allies in the South China Sea, the newspaper said.
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