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News.com.au
03-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
China's new missile could destory US fleet in 20 minutes
The sight of a Chinese bomber carrying a heavy new type of hypersonic missile has heightened fears that it has found a way to counter America's most potent weapon – its 80,000-tonne nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The Trump administration's controversial Secretary of Defence Peter Hegseth has told US media that the United States Navy and Marine Corps 'loses to China in every war game'. In particular, the Pentagon Chief says China's new arsenal of guided hypersonic missiles 'can take out 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of the conflict'. 'So far, our whole power projection platform is the aircraft carrier and the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe,' he added. It's just the latest high-level expression of fear since China unveiled its intentions to build a vast array of relatively cheap, ultra-long-range, ultra-fast missiles capable of bypassing all known defences in the early 2000s. According to the US Defence Department's most recent report on Chinese military power, Beijing has 'dramatically advanced its development of conventional and nuclear-armed hypersonic missile technologies' over the past 20 years. Among them is the YJ-21 hypersonic missile specifically designed to target aircraft carriers. But the missiles have implications reaching far beyond the pride of the US Navy. Australia's own warships, especially helicopter-carrying troopships, are far more vulnerable. And most of the northern bases housing Australia's small fleet of expensive, not-yet fully operational F-35 Stealth Fighters can be hit with little more than a minute's notice. The Pentagon admits it does not know how many such weapons the Chinese have. But Hegseth's dire prediction reveals a deep-set concern that they can defeat the existing interceptor missiles, guns and decoys intended to defend surface ships from attack. US aircraft carriers are massive ships. The USS Gerald R. Ford is 337m long and 77m wide. It weighs about 100,000 tonnes and carries about 75 combat aircraft. The $A20 billion ship carries a crew of some 4500. And it's the most modern of the US fleet of 11 similar nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. 'If we get into a war with China, we should expect to lose some carriers,' says Center for a New American Security think-tank analyst and former US Navy Captain Thomas Shugart. 'The question is: Are the objectives we're trying to fulfil going to be worth it in the view of the American public and its political leadership.' Price of war Modern aircraft carriers are built to be hard targets. On one level, they're simply huge. But the harsh lessons of World War II have taught the world's navies just how vulnerable these ships can be. 'The Navy has put great effort into carrier survivability with extensive compartmentalization, systems duplication, and damage control,' says Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'Armoring, voids, watertight fittings, fixed damage control systems, [and] damage control training all add to the survivability of carriers, as does significant redundancy in propulsion and power generation.' However, Japanese kamikaze attacks in the dying days of World War II showed that sinking such ships wasn't necessary. Wrecking their flight decks was sufficient for a 'mission kill' – making the ships useless. 'China has a deep magazine of long-range weapons and a located carrier would be very difficult to defend and keep operating,' Cancian told Popular Mechanics. If just one carrier was sunk, the loss of its 5500 sailors would exceed US losses in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. And a 2023 CSIS war game predicted defending Taiwan from China's Chairman Xi Jinping would likely involve losing two carriers. Communist Beijing has openly stated it intends to seize control of Taiwan, by force if necessary. Spikes jut from the beaches of Taiwan's Kinmen island. Picture: Sam Yeh/AFP It has hinted it plans to have its military ready to achieve the task by 2027. 'If the US decides it cannot risk its carriers in areas these weapons can reach, it's effectively denied the ability to enter into or operate there, a strategy known as 'Anti-Access/Area Denial,' Cancian explains. That risk extends to bases these weapons can reach. And that includes the US Marine presence in Darwin. 'Integrated air and missile defence (IAMD), without which our northern bases are exposed to attack, should be made a top priority,' Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Dr Malcolm Davis argues in a new assessment of national defences ahead of the federal election. 'This area has been underinvested in by the current government despite advice in the 2023 DSR urging the government to fast-track the acquisition of effective IAMD capability. The 2024 NDS and IIP did announce significantly increased investment into the ADF's northern base infrastructure to prepare it to support high-intensity military operations, which is important but less effective if the bases can't be defended.' Two people ride a motorcycle as a Taiwanese Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet approaches for landing at an air force base in Hsinchu. Picture: Yasuyoshi Chiba/ Secret weapons Chinese state-controlled media has this month released footage of one of its H-6K bombers carrying what appears to be an operational version of a new ballistic missile. The KD-21 ALBM (air-launched ballistic missile) was first spotted at an airshow in 2022. But this is the first time it has been seen attached to a frontline squadron aircraft. The footage shows a bomber carrying a pair of the 'carrier-killer' weapons during a recent military exercise. Its exact characteristics and purpose are unknown. But analysts point to similarities with Russia's Kinzhal AS-24 weapon that has been deployed against Ukraine. The Kinzhal appears to be a relatively simple ballistic missile that soars high above the atmosphere before plunging on its target at hypersonic speeds. But the predictability of its flight path makes it possible to intercept with modern defences. What concerns US analysts about the new Chinese weapon is its believed ability to 'skip' along the Earth's atmosphere-space boundary, making it much harder to see and track. Whatever the case, the new weapon significantly improves the reach of China's bomber force. It can fly at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (6174km/h) to reach targets up to 1000km distant. And the H-6K bomber can carry it up to 6000km before launching it – even without in-flight refuelling. But the KD-21 is just one of several missiles being deployed by Chinese bombers. Another, the KF-21, is much larger and is believed to carry a hypersonic glide vehicle. These are designed to reach immense speeds before dipping below the horizon and weaving through the sky, making its final approach much more difficult to intercept. Similar, but bigger, missiles are being built for China's land-based missile force. Combined, these weapons put every major US military facility, from Alaska to Guam and Darwin, well within Chinese first-strike range. And nuclear-powered aircraft carriers – while capable of moving significant distances at high speeds – can now be readily tracked by swarms of small spy satellites. 'Quite frankly, the carrier has been under threat from one weapons system or another for generations,' Shugart concludes. 'The difference, I think, is that the level of risk has certainly gone up.' Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How much of a threat are Chinese hypersonic missiles to U.S. Navy ships and sailors?
China has 'the world's leading hypersonic missile arsenal' that can threaten U.S. Navy ships, according to the Defense Department's most recent report on Chinese military power. Hypersonic weapons fly at between five and 10 times the speed of sound, and their ability to change course mid-flight makes it difficult to shoot them down. Over the past 20 years, China's military has 'dramatically advanced its development of conventional and nuclear-armed hypersonic missile technologies,' including the YJ-21 hypersonic missile, which is designed to target aircraft carriers, the Defense Department's report says. The report does not include an estimate of how many hypersonic missiles are in the Chinese military's arsenal, and a Pentagon spokesman was unable to provide any additional information on the matter. A primary fear that U.S. warplanners have of hypersonic weapons is the threat they pose to U.S. Navy ships. Current Navy defenses are designed to shoot down drones, attacking bombs, and cruise and ballistic missiles. But those defensive systems may be less effective against hypersonic weapons, which fly as low as planes, travel as fast missile and maneuver on their way to the targets. They pose a risk to ships ranging in size from aircraft carriers to destroyers and increase the likelihood that the Navy would suffer losses in a conflict against China not seen since World War II. To face Chinese hypersonic missiles, a U.S. Pacific Fleet Spokesperson said the service has a variety of capabilities 'to deter, defend against, and, if necessary, defeat aggression,' without providing specific details. 'We are a professional maritime force – ready to respond to any contingency at any time – whether that aggression is against the U.S. or one of our allies and partners,' the spokesperson said in a statement to Task & Purpose. 'Additionally, we are investing in mission-critical capabilities of our own including hypersonic weapons, advanced ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] platforms, unmanned systems, and resilient C4I [command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence] networks that directly address regional anti-access/area denial challenges and defense capabilities.' The threat posed by Chinese hypersonic missiles also requires the U.S. military to develop new countermeasures, said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'President Trump has the exact right idea with Golden Dome,' Wicker said in a statement to Task & Purpose. 'Using our defense reconciliation bill, we are going to accelerate dramatically the development of anti-hypersonic missile defenses. We will build everything from interceptors to capabilities that can confuse and blind the Chinese targeting sensors.' The way that hypersonic missiles approach their targets makes it hard to intercept them, said retired Navy Capt. Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C. Unlike ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons do not follow a predictable trajectory, Shugart told Task & Purpose, and they can maneuver in ways that make them difficult to detect and anticipate where they will hit. 'A ballistic missile is going to go up out of the atmosphere, which puts it pretty high over the horizon, and you should be able to see it on radar as soon as it goes above the horizon a pretty good ways away, depending on the type of radar you have to detect it,' Shugart said. 'A hypersonic missile, on the other hand, skims along the top of the atmosphere. So, it stays a lot lower, closer to the Earth's surface, than a ballistic missile does, which means it pops over the horizon a lot later than a ballistic missile would. So, you're going to have less time to shoot at it, less time to have it on radar and react to it.' All of this poses extreme challenges for Navy air defense missiles, such as the ones being used against Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea. But hypersonic missiles also use a seeker to home in on their targets, and that could potentially be a vulnerability, Shugart said. The Navy could use 'soft kill' defenses against hypersonic missiles to jam their seekers or use chaff and flares to throw them off target, Shugart said. Information about Navy sensors and jammers is highly classified, Shugart said, so it is hard to determine from open sources how effective such defenses would be against hypersonic missiles. Whichever method the Navy uses to defend against hypersonic weapons, sailors will have much less time to react than they would against other types of missiles, he said. For decades, weapons makers in China have had their eyes directly on U.S. Navy warships. Hypersonic weapons represent the latest technological advancement in China's arsenal of anti-ship weapons, said Timothy R. Heath, a senior international defense researcher with the RAND Corporation. China has long worked to build an arsenal of anti-ship cruise missiles. First developed in the 1970s, cruise missiles travel much slower than ballistic missiles and are easier for the Navy to shoot down with standard missiles and the Close-in Weapon Systems, or CIWS, Heath told Task & Purpose. Still, cruise missiles can be highly dangerous to modern ships, especially when launched in large salvos, because they are cheaper, maneuverable, and more accurate than ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The threat of anti-ship ballistic missiles, which emerged in the 1980s, marked a revolution in China's ability to strike U.S. Navy ships. Missiles like the DF-21D and DF-26, combine a ballistic missiles' speed and the ability to deploy decoys that can confuse U.S. defenses. Many U.S. defense analysts recommend that the Navy keep its aircraft carriers out of range of China's Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles. 'Hypersonic weapons offer an evolution in the threat by giving the missiles the ability to maneuver to a limited extent during the mid-course flight, which is when such missiles can travel well above Mach 5,' Heath said. 'This makes the hypersonic missiles even more difficult to counter as new defenses will be needed that do not rely just on anticipating a ballistic trajectory.' It's possible that in a future conflict U.S. Navy aircraft carriers could have to face an attack from ballistic and hypersonic missiles simultaneously, each coming from different trajectories, said M. Taylor Fravel, director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Still, the U.S. military could try to disrupt the process involved in targeting and guiding missiles to their targets, known as the 'kill chain,' Fravel told Task & Purpose. 'The robustness of China's kill chain is not impervious, and, assuming that the general location of a carrier could be identified, a lot would still depend on terminal guidance and comms, which could be jammed, etc.,' Fravel said. While hypersonic missiles certainly increase the risk that U.S. Navy ships would face in a war against China, no true expert would argue '100% the carrier is dead,' Shugart said. 'Quite frankly, the carrier has been under threat from one weapons system or another for generations,' Shugart said. 'The difference, I think, is that the level or risk has certainly gone up.' Despite the Navy's countermeasures against enemy missiles, there are far more satellites in orbit now, making it easier for a near-peer adversary to target U.S. ships, Shugart said. Artificial intelligence may make it easier for China to pore through satellite images to locate Navy aircraft carriers. China can also launch a missile attack against a U.S. aircraft carrier group from land, whereas the Soviets during the Cold War relied on Backfire bombers, which would take much longer to launch en masse, Shugart said. As the ranges of Chinese weapons continue to increase, U.S. ships in the Western Pacific will increasingly be at risk, he said. 'If we get into a war with China, we should expect to lose some carriers,' Shugart said. 'But if we got into a war with any great power, I would expect to lose some carriers. The question is: Are the objectives we're trying to fulfill going to be worth it in the view of the American public and its political leadership.' Navy fires commanding officer, command master chief of expeditionary security squadron The Marine Corps has settled the debate over the size of a rifle squad Leg day: Army cuts down on number of paid parachutists Navy commissions its newest submarine, the USS Iowa Why veterans are the real target audience for 'Helldivers 2'
Asia Times
25-02-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
China puts Philippines on hypersonic nuke alert
China's beef with the Philippines for positioning US Typhon missiles on its territory appears to have entered a threatening new phase amid reports China is developing a new submarine capable of carrying nuclear-tipped hypersonic missiles specifically to neutralize the missile threat. This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that a semi-official military magazine suggested that a Chinese attack submarine currently under development at a shipyard in Wuhan might be designed to target medium-range missile defense systems in the Philippines. The report indicates that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has not yet confirmed if the submarine class is under development. However, SCMP notes that a publication from Naval & Merchant Ships, owned by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), a PLA Navy (PLA-N) supplier, mentions details about its design and features, thus validating its existence and reasons for its development. According to SCMP, the publication mentions that the US Typhon launchers, which have been stationed in the Philippines since April 2024, can hit targets in mainland China from the northern Philippine island of Luzon. It states that China's latest submarine is capable of carrying hypersonic missiles, enabling the PLA to execute attacks from outside enemy defenses and with the option of using nuclear warheads if deemed necessary. The new submarine would likely be armed with the YJ-21, which is deployed on its Type 093 nuclear attack submarines (SSN). The YJ-21 has also been deployed on China's Type 055 cruisers, and its estimated range is 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers with an estimated speed of Mach 10. The submarine, first spotted in mid-2024, appears to have VLS and an X-shaped tail fin for better agility and stability, according to SCMP. The report also mentions that the submarine is expected to have air-independent propulsion (AIP) technology. The US Typhon missile system's presence in the Philippines has heightened tensions with China. In September 2024, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi mentioned that the deployment of the Typhon 'undermines regional peace and stability,' stating that the deployment 'is not in the interests of regional countries.' However, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hit back at the remarks, stating that China is using 'reverse psychology' to stop the Philippines from building its defense capabilities. Teodoro challenged China to 'lead by example,' saying that it should destroy its nuclear arsenal, remove its ballistic missile capabilities, 'get out of the West Philippine Sea,' and get out of Mischief Reef, a contested feature in the South China Sea. But in a thinly veiled signal of displeasure that same month, China held its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test since 1980, launching an ICBM from Hainan that impacted 11,500 kilometers away, just outside of France's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around French Polynesia. Undeterred, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr highlighted in January 2025 that China's missile technology greatly exceeds the Philippines. He proposed a quid pro quo: removing the US Typhon missile system in return for halting aggression in the South China Sea. Despite strong words from Philippine leaders, China seems determined to pursue a hardline stance. Chinese Foreign Minister Spokesperson Guo Jiakun stressed in February 2025 that China 'will not stand idly by when its interests are threatened,' adding that the Philippines is 'placing its security in the hands of others.' If China's claim that its new submarine carries hypersonic missiles is confirmed, the Philippines lacks credible air and missile defense capabilities to defend against such a threat. As of 2022, the SM-6 missile is the only weapon in the US arsenal that can intercept hypersonic missiles, and even that capability is described as 'nascent.' The US Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), designed to destroy hypersonic missiles in their glide phase, is still under development. Should the Philippines reinforce its extended deterrence posture with the US with the Typhon as the foundation, it may acquire military assets supporting the Typhon missile system in its territories. While the Philippines operates SPYDER surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries, they are not designed to engage hypersonic threats. In addition to SPYDER, the Philippines plans to buy additional short-range SAMs, possibly India's Akash missile system. But, as with SPYDER, Akash is not designed to engage or neutralize hypersonic threats. Given the Philippines' capability shortcomings, it may be up to the US to defend its Typhon batteries against China's hypersonic arsenal. In May 2024, the US deployed Patriot missile launchers in the Philippines, with the Patriot successfully intercepting a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile over Kyiv in May 2023. However, Russia's propaganda may have overhyped the Kinzhal's capability, and China, having much more resources than the former, can likely afford more sophisticated hypersonic missiles. Aside from attempting to intercept China's hypersonics, US submarines in the South China Sea could try to track and hunt their Chinese hypersonic-armed counterparts. According to a March 2024 report by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Chinese think tank, 11 US SSNs and two nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) appeared in the South China Sea in 2023. However, as China may be using the South China Sea as a protected bastion for its SSBNs, it may mount a nuclear response if it thinks its underwater nuclear deterrent is threatened. With nuclear-armed submarines from opposing sides patrolling nearby, the Philippines risks getting caught in a nuclear exchange between the US and China. However, in a May 2024 National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) report, Herman Kraft argues that the Philippines does not view China's nuclear arsenal as a direct threat but rather as a factor in US-China competition. Kraft says that while China's assertiveness in the South China Sea has put the Philippines on edge, it has not to date involved the threat of nuclear weapons. While the Philippines acknowledges that US facilities and forces in its territory may become targets for China, Manila is also building relations with other partners such as Japan and Australia. Such an approach, he says, allows the Philippines to develop its defense capabilities without getting involved in US-China nuclear dynamics. Kraft says that while the Philippines pushes for a normative, diplomatic approach against weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear weapons, it is constrained by its longstanding dependence on the US. While the US Typhon missile system does make the Philippines a potential target for China in case of a conflict over Taiwan, it is doubtful whether any Philippine president will allow US offensive strikes from the Philippines' territory, except in the unlikely situation when its main islands are attacked. If any Philippine leader authorizes such strikes, it risks turning the Philippines into a long-term enemy of China, which will always be situated nearby.
