U.S. Navy intelligence officials say they are closely monitoring the development of Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles, particularly in the South China Sea, and say they expect China to continue to spend money on developing the capability.
According to the U.S. military news site The War Zone, after the People’s Liberation Army launched a missile from China’s mainland two months ago that hit a target ship cruising in the South China Sea, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, Vice Adm. In a video conference the day before yesterday (27), Vice Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, Vice Admiral Jeffrey Trussler, commented on the Chinese Communist Party‘s anti-ship ballistic missile capabilities.
Trussler said the U.S. Navy is closely monitoring the development of the Communist Party’s Dongfeng-21D and Dongfeng-26B anti-ship ballistic missiles, but also said, “I’m not going to go into detail about what we [the U.S. Navy] know and what we don’t know.”
According to the Pentagon report, the Dongfeng-21D medium-range missile has a range of at least 1,500 kilometers, and the medium- and long-range Dongfeng-26 series has a range of up to 4,000 kilometers. These missiles are known to be able to be loaded by missile launchers to strike large warships such as aircraft carriers and amphibious landing assault ships, meaning the PLA can strike distant enemy fleets from the relative safety of China’s mainland. Tussler also pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party has used various anti-ship technologies to create a dense, multi-layered defense perimeter around disputed territories in the South China Sea.
In response, Tussler stated, “I hope they [the Chinese Communist Party] continue to spend money developing these kinds of things [anti-ship ballistic missiles], that’s not how we’re going to win the next war.”
This statement by Tussler, as analyzed by War Zone, implies that Tussler is aware of the specific countermeasure capabilities such as systems, strategies, technologies or procedures that the U.S. military currently has, or is developing. But Tussler did not elaborate much on the specific ways the U.S. Navy would respond to anti-ship missiles.
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