17 November 2020

The China Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Bookshelf

Andrew S. Erickson, “The China Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Bookshelf,” China Analysis from Original Sources 以第一手资料研究中国,

17 November 2020.

“Warning to the United States!” In August 2020, China ‘went ballistic’—firing DF-26B and DF-21D “aircraft carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) into the South China Sea. PRC sources just confirmed that the missiles struck a moving target. Time to check out this latest bookshelf compilation… To increase awareness and understanding of this important subject, here is a convenient compendium of major publications and other documents available on the matter thus far. If you know of others, please kindly bring them to my attention via <http://www.andrewerickson.com/contact/>. Thanks!

Placque describing DF-21D ASBM at China Military Museum, Beijing. Photo taken by Professor Mark Metcalf, University of Virginia.

CHINA’S ASBMs: DATA & ANALYSIS

Andrew S. Erickson, interviewed by Harry J. Kazianis, “China’s DF-21D And DF-26B ASBMs: Is The U.S. Military Ready?” 19FortyFive, 15 November 2020.

… … … With its continued development of ASBMs and associated targeting architecture, China continues to work on changing the game in the South China Sea and beyond—but so too does the United States with its own developments and countermeasures. The game is afoot, and much is at stake. But by no means is the game over for the U.S. Navy, in the South China Sea or anywhere else. My bottom line: there’s no cause for declinist defeatism.

First, give us your sense of the development of both these missiles? Are you surprised at the speed of how quickly China has developed, deployed and tested them over the last decade?

I’m not surprised at the speed of PRC ASBM development overall. My study of Chinese aerospace history for my doctorate at Princeton revealed Beijing’s early emphasis on ballistic missiles, including some ASBM-relevant thinking. Three sentences alone repaid several years of graduate reading. In 1972 Vice Premier Zhang Chunqiao told China’s Central Military Commission: “We are continentalists. Now guided missiles are well developed. Installed on shore, they can hit any target, and there is no need to build a big navy.” In March 2007, I testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: “China is…thought to be in the process of developing anti-ship homing warheads for its ballistic missiles, which is a very worrisome development…If they work, they would be extremely difficult to defend against.” Several years of intense open-source research culminated in my 2013 book, Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implications.

That said, the following wording in DoD’s 2020 China report leapt out at me: “The PLA has fielded approximately 200 IRBM launchers and more than 200 missiles.” To me, this is the single most important sentence in what I believe is the best-written report to Congress yet in the two decades that the Pentagon has been issuing them. Reported ranges for systems currently in the PLA Rocket Force inventory suggest that these 200 IRBMs are DF-26s, with some number of the DF-26B ASBM variant among them. The DF-26’s dominance of China’s arsenal within that set of operationally-important range parameters suggests great confidence in this particular missile for two major reasons: (1) extraordinarily fast production and deployment in high numbers of a modern weapon system, and (2) no apparent need to hedge with multiple missile types with broadly overlapping capabilities.

While we knew back in the summer that China tested the DF-21D and DF-26 missiles, we did not know they were tested against moving vessels, as many assumed the missiles splashed down into the sea. What message is China trying to send? 

With its recent ASBM tests, reportedly against moving targets, Beijing seeks to demonstrate a maturing capability and enhance deterrence. It seeks to overawe audiences limited in access to technical details and limited in understanding of basic technical principles—and thereby to generate deference that it has not earned operationally. But however sophisticated and successful, these tests are but one element in a far greater equation. First, ASBMs’ effectiveness in practice hinges on a comprehensive reconnaissance and targeting architecture. As datapoints at the last four Zhuhai Airshows I attended impressed upon me, China is clearly working diligently to develop such architecture. But it remains a work in progress that has not been validated concretely in critical respects. Second, growing American countermeasures make this at least a two-sided contest.

In your view, has the United States and its allies taken this threat seriously? Have we done enough to try and mitigate it? 

The U.S. Navy has taken this threat very seriously; both in terms of hard kill and soft kill systems. There is certainly more work to be done, but America is pacing the threat with manifold potent countermeasures. Soviet Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov termed this struggle of opposites the “dialectic of negation in military affairs.” In American parlance, “The enemy gets a vote.” American military “votes” thus far include Aegis ballistic missile defense, Standard Missile-6, and electronic warfare systems with the potential to confuse incoming ASBMs with false targets that—proportionately speaking—could already far exceed the 355+ ship force that the U.S. Navy is planning to build. As well it should.

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Kristin Huang, “China’s ‘Aircraft-Carrier Killer’ Missiles Successfully Hit Target Ship in South China Sea, PLA Insider Reveals,” South China Morning Post, 14 November 2020.

  • DF-26B and DF-21D missiles launched in August struck moving vessel close to Paracel Islands, former senior colonel Wang Xiangsui says
  • ‘This is a warning to the US, asking it not to take any military risk,’ he says

The two “aircraft-carrier killer” missiles that China launched in August travelled thousands of kilometres and hit their designated target, a moving ship, near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, according to a Chinese military expert.

This is the first time the Chinese side has revealed details of the missile launches, which were first reported by the South China Morning Post in August. The news was later confirmed by the US military.

After the launches it was reported that the missiles fell into the South China Sea, but Wang Xiangsui, a former senior colonel who now works as a professor at Beihang University in Beijing, said they hit a ship, their intended target.

One of the missiles, a DF-26B, was launched from the northwestern province of Qinghai, while the other, a DF-21D, lifted off from Zhejiang province in China’s east.

The launches came a day after Beijing said a US U-2 spy plane entered a no-fly zone without permission during a Chinese live-fire naval drill in the Bohai Sea off its northern coast. The US Navy had earlier sent two aircraft carrier strike groups into the South China Sea.

“So several days later [after the aircraft carrier manoeuvres], we launched the DF-21 and DF-26, and the missiles hit a vessel sailing south of the Paracel Islands,” Wang said at a closed-door meeting in Zhejiang last month. The details of his speech were published for the first time on Wednesday.

“Shortly after that, an American military attaché in Geneva complained [to us] and said it would lead to severe consequences if the missiles hit an American aircraft carrier. They see this as a show of force. But we are doing this because of their provocation,” Wang said.

His remarks were made during the four-day Moganshan forum to discuss domestic and international issues and China’s new five-year plan. The event was organised by the

National Development and Reform Commission and attended by 80 economists, former government officials and entrepreneurs.

“This is a warning to the US, asking it not to take any military risks,” Wang said. “Such actions mark the bottom line of Sino-US confrontation.”

The missile launches came at a time of high tensions between Beijing and Washington over the disputed South China Sea.

The US Navy said on July 4 it had deployed two aircraft carrier groups, led by the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan, to conduct tactical air defence exercises in the disputed waters “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

Beijing blasted the manoeuvres, describing them as provocative, while the US said China’s missile launches were reckless and destabilising.

Song Zhongping, a former instructor with the People’s Liberation Army’s Second Artillery Corps, said the mission was evidence that China could carry out long-range precision strikes against medium to large surface vessels.

“To hit a moving object is not an easy task, especially for ballistic missiles, which normally hit a stationary target,” he said. “The mission shows Chinese missiles are a real deterrent against US warships.”

Michael Raska, an assistant professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said China was developing advanced combat systems capable of negating the United States’ traditional military superiority.

“The key problem for the US is to sustain its long-term deterrence, particularly in contested areas, while simultaneously mitigating risks,” he said.

According to a report published by the US defence department in September,

China may have already overtaken America in the area of missile development and shipbuilding, and is set to double its nuclear warhead stockpile over the next decade.

The PLA has more than 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles with ranges of up to 5,500km (3,400 miles). The US has a single type of conventional ground-launched ballistic missile, with a range of 70km to 300km, the report said.

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Ronald O’RourkeChina Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for CongressRL33153 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 28 October 2020).

Having trouble accessing the website above? Please download a cached copy here!

You can also click here to access the report via the new public CRS website.

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Anti-Ship Missiles

Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles

China reportedly is fielding two types of land-based ballistic missiles with a capability of hitting ships at sea—the DF-21D (Figure 1), a road-mobile anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) with a range of more than 1,500 kilometers (i.e., more than 910 nautical miles), and the DF-26 (Figure 2), a road-mobile, multi-role intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) with a maximum range of about 4,000 kilometers (i.e., about 2,160 nautical miles) that DOD says “is capable of conducting both conventional and nuclear precision strikes against ground targets as well as conventional strikes against naval targets.”21 China reportedly is also developing hypersonic glide vehicles that, if incorporated into Chinese ASBMs, could make Chinese ASBMs more difficult to intercept.22

Observers have expressed strong concerns about China’s ASBMs, because such missiles, in combination with broad-area maritime surveillance and targeting systems, would permit China to attack aircraft carriers, other U.S. Navy ships, or ships of allied or partner navies operating in the

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21 2020 DOD CMSD, p. 55. 22 See, for example, Christian Davenport, “Why the Pentagon Fears the U.S. Is Losing the Hypersonic Arms Race with Russia and China,” Washington Post, June 8, 2018; Keith Button, “Hypersonic Weapons Race,” Aerospace America, June 2018.

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Western Pacific. The U.S. Navy has not previously faced a threat from highly accurate ballistic missiles capable of hitting moving ships at sea. For this reason, some observers have referred to ASBMs as a “game-changing” weapon.

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Appendix B. U.S. Navy’s Ability to Counter Chinese ASBMs

This appendix provides additional discussion of the issue of the U.S. Navy’s ability to counter China’s ASBMs.

Although China’s projected ASBM, as a new type of weapon, might be considered a “game changer,” that does not mean it cannot be countered. There are several potential approaches for countering an ASBM that can be imagined, and these approaches could be used in combination. The ASBM is not the first “game changer” that the Navy has confronted; the Navy in the past has developed counters for other new types of weapons, such as ASCMs, and is likely exploring various approaches for countering ASBMs.

Countering China’s projected ASBMs could involve employing a combination of active (i.e., “hard-kill”) measures, such as shooting down ASBMs with interceptor missiles, and passive (i.e., “soft-kill”) measures, such as those for masking the exact location of Navy ships or confusing ASBM reentry vehicles. Employing a combination of active and passive measures would attack various points in the ASBM “kill chain”—the sequence of events that needs to be completed to carry out a successful ASBM attack. This sequence includes detection, identification, and localization of the target ship, transmission of that data to the ASBM launcher, firing the ASBM, and having the ASBM reentry vehicle find the target ship.

Attacking various points in an opponent’s kill chain is an established method for countering an opponent’s military capability. A September 30, 2011, press report, for example, quotes Lieutenant General Herbert Carlisle, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and requirements, as stating in regard to Air Force planning that “We’ve taken [China’s] kill chains apart to the ‘nth’ degree.” 95

To attack the ASBM kill chain, Navy surface ships, for example, could operate in ways (such as controlling electromagnetic emissions or using deception emitters) that make it more difficult for China to detect, identify, and track those ships.96 The Navy could acquire weapons and systems for disabling or jamming China’s long-range maritime surveillance and targeting systems, for attacking ASBM launchers, for destroying ASBMs in various stages of flight, and for decoying and confusing ASBMs as they approach their intended targets. Options for destroying ASBMs in flight include the SM-3 midcourse BMD interceptor missile (including the new Block IIA

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95 David A. Fulghum, “USAF: Slash And Burn Defense Cuts Will Cost Missions, Capabilities,” Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, September 30, 2011: 6.

96 For a journal article discussing actions by the Navy during the period 1956-1972 to conceal the exact locations of Navy ships, see Robert G. Angevine, “Hiding in Plain Sight, The U.S. Navy and Dispersed Operations Under EMCON, 1956-1972,” Naval War College Review, Spring 2011: 79-95. See also Jonathan F. Sullivan, Defending the Fleet From China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile: Naval Deception’s Roles in Sea-Based Missile Defense, A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Security Studies, April 15, 2011, accessed August 10, 2011, at http://gradworks.umi.com/1491548.pdf; Jon Solomon, “Deception and the Backfire Bomber: Reexamining the Late Cold War Struggle Between Soviet Maritime Reconnaissance and U.S. Navy Countertargeting,” Information Dissemination (www.informationdissemination.net), October 27, 2014; John Solomon, “Deception and the Backfire Bomber, Part II,” Information Dissemination (www.informationdissemination.net), October 28, 2014; John Solomon, “Deception and the Backfire Bomber, Part III,” Information Dissemination (www.informationdissemination.net), October 29, 2014; John Solomon, “Deception and the Backfire Bomber, Part IV,” Information Dissemination (www.informationdissemination.net), October 30, 2014.

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version), the SM-6 terminal-defense BMD interceptor missile, 97 and accelerating development and deployment of the hypervelocity projectile (HVP), electromagnetic rail gun (EMRG), and solid state lasers (SSLs).98 Options for decoying and confusing ASBMs as they approach their intended targets include equipping ships with systems, such as electronic warfare systems or systems for generating radar-opaque smoke clouds or radar-opaque carbon-fiber clouds, that could confuse an ASBM’s terminal-guidance radar.99

An October 4, 2016, press report states the following:

Several times in the past, [Chief of Naval Operations John] Richardson has stressed that long range weapons developments from adversarial nations like Russia and China aren’t the end-all, be-all of naval conflicts.

Just because China’s “carrier-killer” missile has a greater range than the planes aboard a US aircraft carrier doesn’t mean the US would shy away from deploying a carrier within that range, Richardson has stated on different occasions.

Again, Richardson challenged the notion that a so-called A2/AD zone was “an impenetrable keep out zone that forces can only enter at extreme peril to their existence, let alone their mission.”

Richardson took particular issue with the “denial” aspect of A2/AD, repeating his assertion that this denial is an “aspiration” not a “fait accompli.” The maps so common in representing these threats often mark off the limits of different system’s ranges with “red arcs that extend off coastlines,” with the implication that military forces crossing these lines face “certain destruction.”

But this is all speculation according to Richardson: “The reality is far more complex, it’s actually really hard to achieve a hit. It requires the completion of a really complex chain of events…. these arcs represent danger for sure… but the threats they are based on are not insurmountable, and can be managed, will be managed.”

“We can fight from within these defended areas, and we will… this is nothing new and has been done before,” said Richardson.

So while Russia and China can develop missiles and radars and declare their ranges on paper, things get a lot trickier in the real world, where the US has the most and best experience in operating.

“Potential adversaries actually have different geographic features like choke points, islands, ocean currents, mountains,” said Richardson, who urged against oversimplifying complicated, and always unique circumstances in so-called A2/AD zones.

“Have no doubt, the US navy is prepared to go wherever it needs to go, at any time, and stay there for as long as necessary in response to our leadership’s call to project our strategic influence,” Richardson concluded.

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97 For more on the SM-3, including the Block IIA version, and the SM-6, see CRS Report RL33745, Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program: Background and Issues for Congress, by Ronald O’Rourke.

98 For more on HVP, EMRG, and SSLs, see CRS Report R44175, Navy Lasers, Railgun, and Gun-Launched Guided Projectile: Background and Issues for Congress, by Ronald O’Rourke.

99 Regarding the option of systems for generating radar-opaque smoke clouds, Thomas J. Culora, “The Strategic Implications of Obscurants,” Naval War College Review, Summer 2010: 73-84; Scott Tait, “Make Smoke!” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 2011: 58-63. Regarding radar-opaque carbon-fiber clouds, see “7th Fleet Tests Innovative Missile Defense System,” Navy News Services, June 26, 2014; Kevin McCaney, “Navy’s Carbon-Fiber Clouds Could Make Incoming Missiles Miss Their Targets,” Defense Systems (http://defensesystems.com), June 27, 2014. See also Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “Cyber, EW Are Secret Missile Defense Weapons Too Secret To Use,” Breaking Defense, December 4, 2015.

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Similarly, an August 29, 2016, press report states the following:

The United States Navy is absolutely confident in the ability of its aircraft carriers and carrier air wings to fly and fight within zones defended by so-called anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) weapons….

In the view of the U.S. Navy leadership, A2/AD—as it is now called—has existed since the dawn of warfare when primitive man was fighting with rocks and spears. Overtime, A2/AD techniques have evolved as technology has improved with ever-greater range and lethality. Rocks and spears eventually gave way to bows and arrows, muskets and cannons. Thus, the advent of long-range anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles is simply another technological evolution of A2/AD.

“This is the next play in that,” Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, told The National Interest on Aug. 25 during an interview in his office in the Pentagon. “This A2/AD, well, it’s certainly a goal for some of our competitors, but achieving that goal is much different and much more complicated.”

Indeed, as many U.S. Navy commanders including Richardson and Rear Adm. (Upper Half) DeWolfe Miller, the service’s director of air warfare, have pointed out, anti-access bubbles defended by Chinese DF-21D or DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missile systems or Russian Bastion-P supersonic anti-ship missile systems are not impenetrable ‘Iron Domes.’ Nor do formidable Russian and Chinese air defense systems such as the S-400 or HQ-9 necessarily render the airspace they protect into no-go zones for the carrier air wing.

Asked directly if he was confident in the ability of the aircraft carrier and its air wing to fight inside an A2/AD zone protected by anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles as well as advanced air defenses, Richardson was unequivocal in his answer. “Yes,” Richardson said—but he would not say how exactly how due to the need for operational security. “It’s really a suite of capabilities, but I actually think we’re talking too much in the open about some of the things we’re doing, so I want to be thoughtful about how we talk about things so we don’t give any of our competitors an advantage.”…

Miller said that there have been threats to the carrier since the dawn of naval aviation. In many ways, the threat to the carrier was arguably much greater during the Cold War when the Soviet Union massed entire regiments of Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfires and deployed massive cruise missile-armed Oscar-class SSGN submarines to hunt down and destroy the Navy’s flattops. The service developed ways to defeat the Soviet threat—and the carrier will adapt to fight in the current environment.

“We could have had this interview twenty-years-ago and there would have been a threat,” Miller said. “The nature of war and A2/AD is not new—that’s my point. I don’t want to downplay it, but our improvements in information warfare, electronic warfare, payloads, the weapons systems that we’ve previously talked about—plus our ability to train to those capabilities that we have—we will create sanctuaries, we’ll fight in those sanctuaries and we’re a maneuver force.”100 An

October 18, 2017, blog post states the following:

Assuming the DF-21D is ready for battle, can America defend against China’s mighty missile?

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100 Dave Majumdar, “Chief of Naval Operations Richardson: US Aircraft Carriers Can Fight Inside A2/AD Zones,” National Interest, August 29, 2016. See also Ryan Pickrell, “Navy Admirals Brush Aside Biggest Worry Of Modern Naval Combat,” Daily Caller, August 31, 2016; Dave Majumdar, “Here Is Why the US Military Is Not In Panic Mode Over China’s Carrier-Killer Missiles,” National Interest, June 20, 2016.

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While opinions are clearly mixed—in speaking to many sources over the last several years on this topic—it seems clear there is great nervousness in U.S. defense circles. However, as time has passed, initial fears have turned towards a more optimistic assessment…. In the end, the weapon might not be the great “game-changer” that many point it out to be, but a great complicator.101

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101 Harry J. Kazianis, “Could China’s Aircraft Carrier Killer Missiles ‘Sink’ the U.S. Navy?” National Interest, October 18, 2017. See also Dick Mosier, “Breaking the Anti-Ship Missile Kill Chain,” Center for International Maritime Security, February 26, 2018; Richard A. Bitzinger, “The Myth of the ‘Game-Changer’ Weapon,” Asia Times, April 26, 2018.

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Andrew S. Erickson, “Breaking Down the Pentagon’s 2020 China Military Power Report: A Quest for PLA Parity?” The National Interest, 2 September 2020.

The report puts key concerns front and center: arguably, China’s meteoric military progress in recent years has not simply narrowed the gap in limited niches, but has in fact pursued parity and even selective superiority to the degree that, broadly interpreted, “China is already ahead of the United States in certain areas.”

Overall Assessment: 

My first impression is that this is the latest and greatest of the Pentagon’s China Military Power reports since their inception two decades ago. At 173 pages, it is quite possibly the longest and most substantive. A high-water mark in public analysis from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to date, it begins with a self-critical stocktaking of previous editions, yielding striking conclusions concerning the rapidity and relative comprehensiveness of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s progress. This wake-up call regarding the current advanced state, and rapid forward advancement, of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) military capabilities, should land loudly on the desk of Members of Congress and all other U.S. foreign policy and defense community stakeholders. Essential reading, indeed!

The report puts key concerns front and center: arguably, China’s meteoric military progress in recent years has not simply narrowed the gap in limited niches, but has in fact pursued parity and even selective superiority to the degree that, broadly interpreted, “China is already ahead of the United States in certain areas”:

– “Shipbuilding: The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants. In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020.

– Land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles: The PRC has more than 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The United States currently fields one type of conventional GLBM with a range of 70 to 300 kilometers and no GLCMs.

– Integrated air defense systems: The PRC has one of the world’s largest forces of advanced long-range surface-to-air systems—including Russian-built S-400sS-300s, and domestically produced systems—that constitute part of its robust and redundant integrated air defense system architecture.”

One need not accept upfront the report’s assessment that “it is likely that Beijing will seek to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior to—the U.S. military, or that of any other great power that the PRC views as a threat.” But as this 7.5 MB tome documents with excruciating thoroughness the sea change in capabilities the PRC has achieved already, the following conclusion emerges cogently: “What is certain is that the CCP has a strategic end state that it is working towards, which if achieved and its accompanying military modernization left unaddressed, will have serious implications for U.S. national interests and the security of the international rules-based order.” That definitely merits the attention of all who value the peace and prosperity underwritten by the global system that has risen over seven decades from the ashes of devastating world war.

Significant Superlatives:

The report confirms larger achievements that have been openly visible for some time. By the overall conclusion of the report’s data compilation at the end of 2019, China had achieved:

– the world’s largest standing ground force,

– the world’s largest navy, already with 50+ ships more than its American counterpart,

– the world’s largest coast guard “by far,”

– the Indo-Pacific’s largest air forces,

– the world’s largest sub-strategic missile forces,

– one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated surface-to-air missile forces–part of an Integrated Air Defense System architecture that is “robust and redundant… over land areas and within 300 nm (556 km) of its coast,”

– and the world’s leading maritime militia. … …

A Rocket Force to Be Reckoned With:

China’s enormous world-class rocket forces have benefitted, from, among other things, more ballistic missile testing and training launches “than the rest of the world combined” in 2019. The clear implication: watch that space!

Straddling the nuclear and conventional realm, itself a concerning area of growing emphasis for China, is the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). It is designed to be able to attack both land targets (e.g., military facilities on Guam) and sea targets (e.g., a carrier strike group operating in the region). Intriguingly, the report states: “PRC strategists have highlighted the need for lower-yield nuclear weapons in order to increase the deterrence value of China’s nuclear force without defining specific nuclear yield values. A 2017 defense industry publication indicated a lower-yield weapon had been developed for use against campaign and tactical targets that would reduce collateral damage. The DF26 is China’s first nuclear-capable missile system that can conduct precision strikes, and therefore, is the most likely weapon system to field a lower-yield warhead in the near-term.” The author is neither able to find any open sources that elaborate on this point, nor is surprised at their apparent paucity or difficulty to access.

The inventory of this versatile, highly advanced missile is growing rapidly. In this regard, the following line from the report should grab policy-makers’ attention: “The PLA has fielded approximately 200 IRBM launchers and more than 200 missiles.” Since the only other PRC missiles universally-recognized as true IRBMs by range would be the few if any remaining DF-3s, it is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of these 200 IRBMs are DF-26s. That single system’s dominance of China’s arsenal within that set of operationally-important range parameters would seem to represent great confidence in it–no need to hedge Beijing’s bets with multiple types with broadly overlapping capabilities. It would represent extraordinarily fast production and deployment in highly-consequential numbers, itself a related sign of confidence, of a leading-edge weapons system.

The potential ramifications are nothing short of explosive: if China can successfully operate so many advanced missiles within that range category, it could well pursue a targeting doctrine that employed additional numbers of missiles fired to compensate for any remaining limitations in their accuracy. That math already has the potential to look problematic. Unfortunately, given its world-leading missile production capabilities and asymmetric advantage in making the most of them, it is scarcely plausible that China stopped producing DF-26s at the end of 2019. As early as next year’s report, we may receive worrisome news of further brigades’ worth of missiles added to the PLARF’s DF-26 arsenal.

Should China’s DF-26 inventory grow significantly larger still, what will the related operational equations look like then? At what point might exchange ratios begin to look so unforgiving for U.S. and allied navies as to impose highly-disruptive psychological effects of their own? U.S. officials will need to get out ahead of this potential crisis with solid answers to China’s missile challenge and the questions that it may soon generate. If there is one issue revealed in the report that policy-makers should follow up on immediately, this is arguably the one!

This raises a related point: given its determination to increasingly deter and thereby effectively restrict U.S. Navy operations along China’s contested maritime periphery and its Indo-Pacific approaches, it is no coincidence that the PRC has developed and deployed two major anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs)the DF-26 and DF-21D.

Consider their potential complementarity, as detailed by the Department of Defense: “The DF-21D has a range exceeding 1,500 km, is fitted with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MARV) warhead, and is claimed to be capable of rapidly reloading in the field. The PLARF continues to grow its inventories of DF-26 IRBM, which it first revealed in 2015 and fielded in 2016. The multirole DF-26 is designed to rapidly swap conventional and nuclear warheads and is capable of conducting precision strikes in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea from mainland China.”

If Beijing increasingly believes that it has real prospects of targeting effectively U.S. and allied vessels (1) out to the First Island Chain with the DF-21D and (2) out to the Second Island Chain in the Western Pacific as well as into the Indian Ocean with the DF-26, what will be the ramifications? (My hunch: some increasingly strong version of “not good.”) All the more reason to digest and address the report’s key findings with alacrity.

Returning to the subject of China’s emphasis on systems that risk blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear capabilities, particularly in complex real-time scenarios, the PLA Rocket Force is clearly investing heavily in hypersonic glide vehicles. In crisis conditions, the rapid maneuvering capabilities of such systems may frustrate the ready determination of precisely where they were launched from; and hence whether it was by a brigade known to have conventional or nuclear weapons (or both). Specifically, “China has placed a heavy emphasis on developing and testing hypersonic glide vehicles. In August 2018, China successfully tested the XINGKONG-2 (Starry Sky-2), which it publicly described as a hypersonic waverider vehicle. The PLARF also paraded the DF-17 missile for the first time as part of the PRC’s 70th anniversary parade in 2019” (56). … …

Tidal Waves: Naval and Other Overwater Capabilities:

Thanks to impressive shipbuilding, one of three areas of advantage for China emphasized upfront in the report, China has the world’s largest navy numerically at 350 ships. This is already at least four dozen more than the U.S. Navy, even if the equivalent figure of 293 that the report cites is replaced with the service’s current official figure of closer to 300 total deployable battle force ships. Moreover, the PLA Navy (PLAN) is not simply running up the numbers with flotillas of small craft: its total of 350 warships includes “more than 130 major surface combatants” (44).

And quality is riding shotgun with quantity. Consider the following analysis regarding the aforementioned major surface combatants: “The PLAN remains engaged in a robust shipbuilding program for surface combatants, producing new guided-missile cruisers (CGs), guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) and corvettes (FFLs). These assets will significantly upgrade the PLAN’s air defense, anti-ship, and antisubmarine capabilities and will be critical as the PLAN expands its operations beyond the range of the PLA’s shore-based air defense systems. In December 2019, China launched the sixth Renhai class cruiser (Type 055) and was set to commission the first hull of the class in early 2020. The Renhai [will] carry a large load out of weapons including ASCMs [anti-ship cruise missiles], surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and anti-submarine weapons along with likely LACMs [land-attack cruise missiles] and …ASBMs… when those become operational.” Recall the previous discussion of China’s DF-21D and DF-26 ASBMs, and now imagine multiple large PLAN warships with some form of ASBMs (even if range-limited by shipboard size restrictions) among their weapons load-outs. … … …

***

Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020 (Arlington, VA: Department of Defense, 1 September 2020).

p. viii 

The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) is responsible for the PRC’s strategic land-based nuclear and conventional missile forces. The PLARF develops and fields a wide variety of conventional mobile ground-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The PRC is developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that will significantly improve its nuclear-capable missile forces. The number of warheads on the PRC’s land-based ICBMs capable of threatening the United States is expected to grow to roughly 200 in the next five years.

– The PRC is expanding its inventory of the multi-role DF-26, a mobile, ground-launched intermediate-range ballistic missile system capable of rapidly swapping conventional and nuclear warheads.

– The PRC’s robust ground-based conventional missile forces compliment the growing size and capabilities of its air- and sea-based precision strike capabilities.”

 p. 45

“In December 2019, China launched the sixth Renhai class cruiser (Type 055) and was set to commission the first hull of the class in early 2020. The Renhai carry a large load out of weapons including ASCMs, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and anti-submarine weapons along with likely LACMs and anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) when those become operational.”

p. 55

“The PLARF continues to grow its inventories of DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) which is capable of conducting both conventional and nuclear precision strikes against ground targets as well as conventional strikes against naval targets.”

“The PLARF fields a variety of conventional mobile ground-launched short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles. The PLARF’s ground-based missile forces compliment the air and sea-based precision strike capabilities of the PLAAF and PLAN. The PLARF’s conventional missile forces includes the CSS-6 (DF-15) short-range ballistic missile …”

p. 56

“… (SRBM) (range 725-850 km); the CSS-7 (DF-11) SRBM (600 km); the CSS-11 (DF-16) SRBM (more than 700 km); land-attack and anti-ship variants of the CSS-5 (DF-21) medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) (approximately 1,500 km); the DF-26 IRBM (approximately 4,000 km); and the CJ-10 (DH10) ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) (approximately 1,500 km). The PLARF’s conventionally armed CSS-5 Mod 5 (DF-21D) ASBM variant gives the PLA the capability to conduct long-range precision strikes against ships, including aircraft carriers, out to the Western Pacific from mainland China. The DF-21D has a range exceeding 1,500 km, is fitted with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MARV) warhead, and is claimed to be capable of rapidly reloading in the field. The PLARF continues to grow its inventories of DF-26 IRBM, which it first revealed in 2015 and fielded in 2016. The multirole DF-26 is designed to rapidly swap conventional and nuclear warheads and is capable of conducting precision strikes in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea from mainland China.”

p. 57

Exhibit: Conventional Strike Capabilities

p. 59

Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles (1,000-3,000 km). The PLA fields approximately 150 conventional MRBMs launchers and more than 150 missiles which increase the range at which it can conduct precision strikes against land targets and naval ships operating out to the First Island Chain.”

Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (3,000-5,500 km). The PLA’s DF-26 is a road-mobile, nuclear and conventional capable IRBM that is able to conduct near-precision strikes as far away from China as Guam in the Second Island Chain. The PLA has fielded approximately 200 IRBM launchers and more than 200 missiles. In conjunction with reconnaissance satellites, the PLAN’s expanding network of sky wave and surface wave over-the-horizon (OTH) systems provide warning and targeting capabilities at extended distances from China to support long-range precision strikes, including employment of ASBMs.”

p. 73

“Additionally, the PLA has fielded CSS-5 ASBMs specifically designed to hold adversary aircraft carriers at risk when located up to 1,500 km off China’s coast, and it has an ASBM variant of the longer range DF-26 IRBM. … Whether the PLA can collect accurate targeting information and pass it to launch platforms in time for successful strikes in sea areas beyond the first island chain is unclear.”

 p. 78

“The Renhai CG displaces more than 10,000 tons and can carry an array of long-range ASCMs and SAMs. It will likely be able to launch ASBMs and LACMs once these weapons are available. The Renhai CG will be China’s premier carrier escort for blue-water operations. Four units are currently outfitting, with several more under construction.”

p. 81

PLA Rocket Force (PLARF). The PLARF fields multiple missiles capable of strikes within and beyond the First Island Chain. Among these are the CSS-5 Mod 5 (DF-21D) ASBM – with a range of 1,500 km – and a MARV to challenge BMD systems. China also deploys the land-attack CSS-5 Mod 4 (DF-21C) and the ground-launched CH-SSC-9 (CJ-10) LACM, placing infrastructure on Okinawa and the main Japanese islands at risk. The DF-26 IRBM has a maximum range of 4,000 km and is capable of precision strikes against ground and ship targets, potentially threatening U.S. land and sea-based forces as far away as Guam.”

 p. 86 

Land-Based Platforms. China’s nuclear arsenal currently consists of approximately 100 ICBMs, including the silo-based CSS-4 Mod 2 (DF-5A) and Mod 3 (DF-5B); the solid-fueled, road-mobile CSS-10-class (DF-31, DF-31A and DF-31AG); and the more limited range roll-out-to-launch CSS-3 (DF-4). This strategic arsenal is complemented by road-mobile, solid-fueled CSS-5 Mod 2 and Mod 6 (DF-21) MRBMs and DF-26 IRBMs capable of ranging targets in the Indo-Pacific region. Media reports suggest that China may be developing a DF-5C and DF-31B ICBM with the DF-41 (CSS-X20) ICBM fielding possible in the near term.”

 p. 166

Exhibit: China’s Rocket Force

***

Liu Zhen, “Why China Brought Out the ‘Aircraft-Carrier Killer’ to Flex Its Military Muscle,” South China Morning Post, 28 August 2020.

  • PLA test-fired four medium-range ballistic missiles in the South China Sea on Wednesday, according to US defence official
  • They included the DF-26B and DF-21D – types of weapons banned under the INF treaty, which Beijing wasn’t part of

When China flexed its military muscle in the South China Sea on Wednesday, it put the PLA’s most advanced land-based anti-ship ballistic missile to the test: the “aircraft-carrier killer”.

The DF-26B was fired into the northern area of the disputed waterway from Qinghai province in China’s northwest, a source close to the military said, in a move seen as a warning to the United States.

They said a DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile was also launched from Zhejiang province in the east.

However, a US defence official said the Chinese military had launched four medium-range ballistic missiles in the region on Wednesday, though they had yet to identify them, according to Reuters.

The missiles were fired a day after China said a US U-2 spy plane had entered a no-fly zone without permission during a Chinese live-fire naval drill in the Bohai Sea off its north coast, and amid escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington in the region.

It is not known whether the missiles hit any targets, but a US Air Force missile-tracking spy plane was dispatched to the area, flight tracking information showed, apparently to monitor and collect intelligence on the warheads.

China was not a signatory to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty agreed by the US and Soviet Union towards the end of the Cold War, but its DF-26 and DF-21D are types of weapons banned under the pact. When the US withdrew from the treaty last year, it cited China’s deployment of such weapons as justification. It also said Russia had violated the treaty.

From the launch site in Qinghai to the target area in the South China Sea, the “aircraft-carrier killer” would have travelled about 2,500km (1,550 miles), while the distance from Zhejiang for the DF-21D was about 1,600km (995 miles).

The two missiles have a range of 4,000km (2,485 miles) and 1,800km (1,120 miles), respectively.

Travelling out of the atmosphere then re-entering at more than 20 times the speed of sound, they are much faster and harder to intercept than cruise missiles. The DF-21D is designed to strike large, moving surface ships, while the nuclear-capable DF-26 can hit both surface and ground targets.

Apart from its road-mobile “aircraft-carrier killer”, unveiled in 2015, the People’s Liberation Army also has the world’s first hypersonic glide missile in service, the DF-17, which was revealed in 2019.

But the US and Soviet Union were banned from developing such land-based ballistic or cruise missiles with a range of between 500km and 5,500km (310 miles and 3,420 miles) under the INF treaty they signed in 1987. Instead, they shifted focus to air- and sea-based missiles, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Pressure from western Europe played a big part in the treaty, because missiles in that range would not reach from Moscow to Washington, but they could pose a significant threat to European nations if the two Cold War rivals exchanged fire.

Since it pulled out of the treaty, the US has resumed research and development of intermediate-range missiles and is looking for missile bases in the Indo-Pacific region, which US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper on Wednesday described as “the epicentre of a great power competition with China.”

The PLA is also believed to have test-fired anti-ship ballistic missiles into the South China Sea in July last year. The US made the claim after the Chinese authorities marked out two no-fly zones there – one of which covered a similar area between Hainan Island and the Paracels, where the missiles were believed to have been fired on Wednesday.

China denied the accusation, saying its military had conducted routine live-fire drills.

Bill Gertz, “Pentagon Confirms China Missile Test in South China Sea,” The Washington Times, 26 August 2020.

The Pentagon on Thursday confirmed that China’s military launched a salvo of medium-range ballistic missiles tests into the contested waters of the South China Sea.

DoD can confirm that the Chinese military launched four medium-range missiles Wednesday from mainland China,” a defense official said.” The missiles impacted in the South China Sea between Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands,” the official added. “The launch appears to have been part of a previously announced exercise.”

No additional details were available. …

Earlier, a U.S. official confirmed Chinese press reports that the missile salvo included a DF-26 intermediate-range anti-ship ballistic missile and a DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile fired from mainland China during exercises in the South China Sea. …

The South China Morning Post reported that the DF-26 was launched from Qinghai on Tuesday, citing a source close to the Chinese military. A U.S. official confirmed that missile test was carried out and called it provocative but provided no details.

… The DF-26 was launched from a missile base in northwestern China and the DF-21D was fired from Zhejiangprovince in the eastern part of the country. Both missiles are believed to be able to carry both nuclear and conventional warheads.

The South China Morning Post quoted the military source as saying the missile firings were intended to improve the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to deny access to the sea.

“This is China’s response to the potential risks brought by the increasingly frequent incoming U.S. warplanes and military vessels in the South China Sea,” the source told the newspaper. “China doesn’t want the neighboring countries to misunderstand Beijing’s goals.” … … …

***

Kristin Huang, “Chinese Military Fires ‘Aircraft-Carrier Killer’ Missile into South China Sea in ‘Warning to the United States’,” South China Morning Post, 26 August 2020.

  • Weapon one of two sent over disputed waters a day after American spy plane reportedly nears Chinese naval drill, source says
  • PLA flexes muscle in response to continued US testing of Beijing’s bottom lines, analyst says

China launched two missiles, including an “aircraft-carrier killer”, into the South China Sea on Wednesday morning, a source close to the Chinese military said, sending a clear warning to the United States.

The move came one day after China said a US U-2 spy plane entered a no-fly zone without permission during a Chinese live-fire naval drill in the Bohai Sea off its north coast.

One of the missiles, a DF-26B, was launched from the northwestern province of Qinghai, while the other, a DF-21D, lifted off from Zhejiang province in the east.

Both were fired into an area between Hainan province and the Paracel Islands, the source said.

The landing areas were within a zone that Hainan maritime safety authorities said on Friday would be off limits because of military exercises from Monday to Saturday.

China launched two missiles, including an “aircraft-carrier killer”, into the South China Sea on Wednesday morning, a source close to the Chinese military said, sending a clear warning to the United States.

The move came one day after China said a US U-2 spy plane entered a no-fly zone without permission during a Chinese live-fire naval drill in the Bohai Sea off its north coast.

One of the missiles, a DF-26B, was launched from the northwestern province of Qinghai, while the other, a DF-21D, lifted off from Zhejiang province in the east.

Both were fired into an area between Hainan province and the Paracel Islands, the source said.

The landing areas were within a zone that Hainan maritime safety authorities said on Friday would be off limits because of military exercises from Monday to Saturday.

The DF-26 dual-capable missile is a type of weapon banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty treaty signed by the US and Soviet Union towards the end of the Cold War. When the US withdrew from the treaty last year, it cited China’s deployment of such weapons as justification.

The DF-26 has a range of 4,000km (2,485 miles) and can be used in nuclear or conventional strikes against ground and naval targets.

The DF-21 has a range of around 1,800km, with state media describing the most advanced in the series, the DF-21D, as the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile.

The source said the missile launch was aimed at improving China’s ability to deny other forces access to the South China Sea, a disputed region.

“This is China’s response to the potential risks brought by the increasingly frequent incoming US warplanes and military vessels in the South China Sea,” the source said. “China doesn’t want the neighbouring countries to misunderstand Beijing’s goals.”

Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military commentator, said the missile launches were clearly meant to send a signal to the United States.

“The US continues to test China’s bottom line in Taiwan and South China Sea issues, and this pushed China to showcase its military strength to let Washington know that even US aircraft carriers cannot flex their full muscle near China’s coast,” Song said.

China’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the launches. … … …

***

Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Massive Military Parade Shows Beijing is a Missile Superpower,” The National Interest, 1 October 2019.

Washington is right to leave a missile-limiting treaty that Beijing won’t even consider joining.

Paramount leader Xi Jinping just presided over the largest, most impressive military parade in the history of the world. The occasion: to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which just exceeded the Soviet Union’s lifespan by one year. The parade indeed showcased numerous military technological accomplishments far exceeding previous Soviet efforts. Showing ironclad resolve, Xi emphasized that China “continue to strive forward [with] the complete unification of our country.”

The bottom line: Missiles, missiles, and more missiles. For coercion, coercion, and coercion. Paraded, ironically, down Beijing’s “Avenue of Eternal Peace” (长安大街). Tradition holds that all systems displayed are already deployed for service in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). For specialists, this just underscores a long-running PRC effort at missile-centric deterrence. For other observers, the sheer scope and scale of hardware displayed—much of it conveniently labeled with large English letters—may well offer a revelation concerning Beijing’s military might and assertiveness.

Robust Rocket Rollouts:

In true PRC fashion, for this national-level effort nothing was left to chance. China’s Military Parade (中国阅兵) was patriotically narrated in confident detail on China Central Television. Since 2015, preparations had been underway at facilities designed to mimic the Beijing setting. And the entire pageant was wrapped in redolent rhetoric along the lines of “strong country dream, strong military dream” (强国梦, 强军梦). But this was not a case of style and symbolism over substance: the sheer array of real strategic systems on display was simply staggering, and shows real strength.

Arguably today’s biggest single statement for foreign consumption—literally backstopping the entire parade—was China’s debut of the DF-41 solid-fueled road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). China’s newest, most powerful, and arguably most advanced nuclear weapons system, the DF-41 has clearly been designed and deployed with deterring the United States in mind. It is described as “a cornerstone of China’s nuclear [weapons] power” (我国核力量重要支撑). This is part of Beijing’s comprehensive, missile-centric effort at nuclear and conventional deterrence.

Other missiles displayed for the first time ever in the parade marked China at the cutting-edge of frontier military technologies. These included the little-known DF-100/CJ-100 “supersonic cruise missile,” described as “the newest in the Changjian series,” and the prominently-displayed DF-17 conventional missile with its sleek hypersonic glide vehicle.

Other ballistic missiles on parade included the well-known DF-5B ICBM whose multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) greatly complicate defenses against it, the DF-31AG mobile ICBM with its “high survivability,” the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile, and the DF-26 nuclear/conventional intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of striking land and sea targets. The HQ surface-to-air missile series was well-represented, with -6A, -9B, -12A, -16, and -22 variants. Other cruise missiles included the YJ-12B and YJ-18 supersonic anti-ship weapons.

Aircraft soaring overhead included the  Y-20, -9, and -8 transports; the KJ-2000 airborne warning and control (AWACs) system; the J-20 low-observable fighter; Jst-15 carrier-based multirole fighters representing the “peaks” (高峰) from the aircraft carrier Liaoning; the J-16 and J-10B fighters; the H-6N bomber and H-6U tanker variants; and a swarm of Z-8B, -9, -10, -15, -19, and -20 helicopters. Multiple unmanned aerial vehicles paraded below included the GJ-11 low-observable attack drone. Meanwhile, far removed from their likely natural element in the South China Sea were a pair of HSU001 truck-borne underwater drones.

Marching in exact, increasingly joint formations were all major types of Chinese armed forces personnel. Notably, with Xi having stated that the central government would “maintain long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and Macau,” the People’s Armed Police was showcased as “an important apparatus for social stability” (社会稳定的重要装备), the Strategic Support Force made its lockstep debut, and PLA Rocket Force personnel were hailed for their strength and importance.

But the biggest single theme was the sheer number and variety of conventional missiles.

Chinese Lesson for America: Avoid Unequal Treaties

So what does this mean for U.S. policy? Most importantly, Beijing’s massive missile buildup underscores a major reason why the Trump Administration was right to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty: to free Washington to deter aggression with missiles of its own.

It’s common sense that an agreement can’t work if only one party honors it. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what unraveled INF. In formally withdrawing on August 2, 2019, Washington bluntly acknowledged that this increasingly antiquated accord had no future. First, the treaty’s sole cosignatory, Moscow, had been flouting INF rules for years. President Obama himself considered terminating it for precisely that reason. Second, this unilateral American constraint had become particularly costly: during the INF’s 32-year lifespan China developed the world’s foremost conventional missile force precisely within ranges that INF prohibited (ground-launched nuclear and conventional cruise and ballistic missiles of 500-5,500 km). Much of which was on prominent display today.

Yet Beijing wouldn’t join INF—the one way the treaty might have been rejuvenated. It still won’t. And China increasingly threatens the U.S. and its allies and partners, as well regional peace and norms, with a robust missile-centric arsenal. It’s not the INF’s demise itself that should be lamented, therefore, but rather the Russo-Chinese actions that precipitated it. Exiting INF is no panacea, but it opens much-needed possibilities for resetting the military balance and calculus in the Asia-Pacific. There, Chinese missiles pose a significant threat to U.S. and regional security. Freed from the constraints of the INF, the U.S. should take the opportunity to develop and deploy its own missiles to counter that threat.

Beijing’s own official statements indicate that it will not accede to any other substantive arms control agreements for the foreseeable future. On the contrary, earlier this summer China fired six anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) into the South China Sea. Ironically, by forcing the withdrawal and destruction of U.S. Pershing II active radar-homing ballistic missiles at the end of the 1980s, INF may have provided China key technologies facilitating the development of its ASBMs—potent systems the United States and Russia could have produced themselves long before absent INF restrictions. At a minimum, PRC researchers studied Pershing II missiles extremely closely.

The several dozen “carrier killer” weapons China fields today are but a fraction of its potent arsenal. China “controls the largest and most diverse missile force in the world, with an inventory of more than 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles,” Admiral Harry Harris, then commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, testified in 2017. “Approximately, 95% of [China’s] missiles would violate the INF if China was a signatory.” Put another way, up to 2,650 PRC missiles wouldn’t comply. Importantly, Beijing appears to believe that a nuclear arsenal far smaller than Russia’s or America’s is sufficient for deterrence. Chinese strategists view conventionally-armed missiles as far more acceptable, and hence far more useful. Thus, China’s conventional missiles exceed its nuclear missiles by at least a 7:1 ratio. That happens to exploit an enormous loophole in even general arms control discussions, let alone actual enforceable restrictions.

All too often, Beijing’s official statements and arms control discourse more broadly focus exclusively on nuclear weapons—which of course merit attention—to the exclusion of addressing the high-end conventional weapons systems that China has deployed on an industrial scale. This missile myopia must end now: Aside from increasingly disruptive cyber technologies, China’s missile-centric military buildup may be the single biggest factor eroding American power and influence in Asia. If not countered effectively, it could restructure the region away from the peace and prosperity-promoting alliances and rules that Washington has spent tremendous blood and treasure to cultivate over the last eight decades.

For years, China has made meteoric military progress by persistently pursuing technologies that potentially place opponents on the wrong end of physics—in a capabilities competition favoring China designed to become extremely expensive and risky for the United States to even wage, let alone win. And that’s precisely the point: Beijing wants to win without fighting and compel Washington and its regional allies to yield to its self-proclaimed “core interests” by intimidating with a fait accompli of deterrent military might—just like the display it paraded so prominently today.

The ballistic missile has been the cornerstone of Beijing’s effort. Whereas aerodynamically-guided cruise missiles must operate within aircraft-like altitudes, longer-range ballistic missiles maximize speed by flying above the atmosphere mid-course. Ballistic missiles of all ranges close on their targets at multiple times the speed of sound, leaving little time and few opportunities to intercept them. For China—a technologically capable power that has prioritized their development since the late 1950s—ballistic missiles can be developed, deployed, and employed far more cheaply and effectively than they can be defended against.

Moreover, although China is finally dipping its toe in the water regarding sea-based nuclear weapons deployment, the vast majority of its missiles remain land-based. This exploits two formidable factors. First, as the Iraq War ‘Scud Hunt’ demonstrated, even in exposed desert it is extremely difficult to find mobile missiles in real time and neutralize them prior to their launch. This is true all the more for China’s full range of concealing terrains, extensive underground facilities that provide protection for the missile force, ability to deploy road-mobile missiles, and potential to communicate securely by having launch brigades access secure fiber optic networks at pre-designated locations. Second, large INF-range missiles are substantially easier and cheaper to develop and operate in land-based form than in equivalent variants for submarines, surface ships, and aircraft. Third, launching missiles from deep in the interior of a large nation like China makes certain types of intercept (e.g., boost-phase) impossible.

Faced with increasing competition from a China determined and able to pursue concerning scenarios such as coercion of Taiwan as never before, the United States can no longer afford to pursue only the costliest technologically superior, but operationally defensive, approaches of the past. Rather, it must increasingly take pages from China’s own post-Cold War playbook. And expanding emphasis on missiles is one of the most potent pages yet written: Washington’s INF withdrawal offers important possibilities.

A Martian strategist reviewing Earthly conditions for the first time today might well ask why the United States had watched China’s missile might grow so fast and alter the military balance so much, while making so few missile moves of its own. They would doubtless note that China had not only deployed the world’s most numerous and diverse land-based missile force, but also stuffed its submarines to the gills with conventional missiles, even at the expense of torpedoes. They might ask why the United States had voluntarily kept its missiles off land in East Asia, and moreover heretofore armed its astronomically expensive submarines primarily with nuclear missiles but few conventional missiles. (Encouragingly, the Block V Virginia-class attack sub will have six large-diameter tubes that could hold a total of 42 Tomahawk cruise missiles.) They might note that many INF-related arms control concerns were decidedly Eurocentric at a time when many of the most dramatic and destabilizing military developments were occurring unrestrained in Asia. Such an outside observer might well rapidly comprehend the INF-imposed constraints on U.S. deterrence and operations in the Asia-Pacific.

Policy Implications:

Unshackled from INF, what can the United States do now? First, it can resume development and testing of medium- and intermediate-range missiles that don’t require Navy or Air Force platforms to deploy and employ. Testing has already begun on a ground-launched variant of the Tomahawk, allowing deployment within approximately 18 months. The U.S. will eventually test a new mobile, ground-launched intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). Lacking the Tomahawk’s long-proven heritage, or any post-INF American analogue, this 3,000-4,000-km-range missile will likely take several years to develop.

Second, the United States can begin to deploy land-based cruise and ballistic missiles as they become available. The most realistic and promising Asia-Pacific location is the sovereign American territory of Guam, together other Pacific possessions. Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are also potential locations. To be sure, smaller islands may be limited in concealing terrain, and foreign missile hosting may face popular pushback. So initial deployment may well be confined to Guam. But whatever limits the United States may experience in basing ground-launched missiles abroad, it can still pursue agreements with allies and partners to allow the rapid introduction of missiles in various contingencies to support their defense.

Even if peacetime politics precluded permanent deployment, more concerning scenarios could tip the balance in favor of local support. Additionally, the more growing Chinese military capabilities and intentions increase regional concerns, the more support for hosting deterrent weapons may increase. Conversely, should China somehow pursue a more peaceful path, U.S. and allied missile deployment could become less urgent. In short, opening this new window affords new possibilities for calibrated counter-coercion.

Third, in the arcane world of military deterrence, increasing options and room for maneuver forces competitors and potential adversaries to think in new ways by factoring in potential capabilities and actions. Simply by withdrawing from INF, Washington has put new options on the table. Russia remains free to work with the United States to limit nuclear weapons—as well as emerging hypersonic and undersea nuclear weapons and its uniquely hazardous nuclear-powered cruise missile program, none of which are currently limited by any agreement. And if Beijing eventually sits down at the arms control negotiating table at all—rather than expecting others to make all the concessions, as before—it will be because Washington allowed itself new options, not because it further tied its hands unilaterally. Chinese state spokespeople and media are already decrying U.S. IRBM development and pressuring the U.S. and its allies, but should be paid no heed. Washington should not be swayed by one-sided propaganda embodying the hypocritical notion that “The magistrates are free to set fires, while the common people are forbidden even to light lamps.”

These steps represent one of the most straightforward ways to advance U.S. security and regional interests by reclaiming the right end of physics and cost competition regarding advanced weapons, reassuring regional allies and partners, deterring Chinese aggression, and enabling options for addressing any security threats that do materialize.

The bottom line: a new U.S. posture involving some mobile conventional IRBMs on Guam, and some capability to deploy them on relatively short notice to other locations, will offer a reasonably useful if relatively limited set of options. It will complicate Chinese military planning and have deterrent effect. With an increasingly assertive Beijing bullying its neighbors and pressuring the U.S. and its allies to yield to unilateral demands, resetting the military missile calculus will be a victory in itself. And, as China’s 70th anniversary military parade just made it unmistakably clear, the time to act is now.

ANDREW S. ERICKSON is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College. He is the author of the book Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories and Strategic Implications.

***

Andrew S. Erickson, “Good Riddance to the INF Treaty: Washington Shouldn’t Tie Its Own Hands in Asia,” Foreign Affairs, 29 August 2019.

In early August, the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a landmark 1987 arms-control accord with Russia. Just two weeks later, on a small island off the Californian coast, the Pentagon tested a land-based missile once banned under the agreement. The demise of the INF Treaty is now official, on paper as on the ground.

The treaty’s collapse was a long time coming. An agreement cannot work if only one party honors it, and the INF Treaty’s sole cosignatory, Moscow, had been flouting its rules for years. During his presidency, Barack Obama considered withdrawing from the INF for precisely the same reason that helped drive President Donald Trump’s decision. Still, to many observers, the decision to ditch the treaty is misguided and dangerous. The Trump administration, they argue, is dismantling guardrails that were erected to keep tensions from escalating into a destabilizing arms race. At a time when several elements of the global arms control architecture are fraying, this latest casualty could only make matters worse.

But that line of criticism misses the point. If unilateral U.S. adherence to the treaty was futile in the face of repeated Russian transgressions, it had become outright dangerous in the face of a much more potent adversary—China. During the INF Treaty’s 32-year lifespan, China developed the world’s foremost conventional missile force, brimming with the very weapons that the treaty prohibited the United States from developing: ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. … … …

ANDREW S. ERICKSON is Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College. He is the author of the book Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories and Strategic Implications.

Click here to access a full-length text-searchable PDF of the book.

***

アンドリュー・S・エリクソン [Andrew S. Erickson], 米海軍大学教授(戦略学)、ハーバード大学フェアバンクセンターの客員スカラー [Professor of Strategy, U.S. Naval War College and Visiting Scholar, Fairbank Center, Harvard University], “中国ミサイル戦力の脅威―― INF条約後の米アジア戦略” [Good Riddance to the INF Treaty: Washington Shouldn’t Tie Its Own Hands in Asia], フォーリン・アフェアーズ・リポート [Foreign Affairs Report], 4 September 2019.

中国ミサイル戦力の脅威

―― INF条約後の米アジア戦略

アンドリュー・S・エリクソン 米海軍大学戦略教授

Good Riddance to the INF Treaty Washington Shouldn’t Tie Its Own Hands in Asia

Andrew S. Erickson 米海軍大学教授(戦略学)。現在は、ハーバード大学フェアバンクセンターの客員スカラー。最近の著書にChinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implicationsがある

(ヨーロッパの安全保障に配慮して)米ロが締結したINF条約は、これまでもワシントンのアジア戦略に対する拘束を作り出してきた。この間に、中国は世界有数の通常ミサイル戦力を整備し、(米ロ間では)生産が禁止されてきたタイプの地上配備型の射程500―5500キロのクルーズミサイル、弾道ミサイルを十分過ぎるほどに開発している。実際、サイバー空間のディスラプティブテクノロジー(破壊的技術)を別にすれば、中国のミサイル戦力を中心とする軍備増強が、アジアにおけるアメリカのパワーと影響力を形骸化させる最大の要因になるかもしれない。ワシントンはこれに対抗して「地上配備型ミサイルを基盤とする抑止」をアジアで構築すべきかもしれない。幸い、INF条約の死滅によって、ワシントンは、自国に有利な形へ軍事バランスをリセットするために必要とされていた機会を手にいれている。

  • 中国のミサイル戦力の脅威
  • 間隙を縫った中国
  • IRBMの開発・配備を

***

Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019 (Arlington, VA: Department of Defense, 2 May 2019).

p. 44

PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY ROCKET FORCE (PLARF)

Key Takeaways

  • In 2018, the PLARF advanced long-term modernization plans to enhance its “strategic deterrence.”
  • The PLARF continues to grow its IRBM inventories, including that of the DF-26, which it first fielded in 2016.
  • ICBMs under development represent a significant improvement in China’s nuclear-capable missile forces.

The PLARF trains, equips, and operates China’s land-based nuclear and conventional missiles. In 2018, it advanced long-term modernization plans to enhance its “strategic deterrence capability,” a theme President Xi Jinping echoed during a visit to PLARF headquarters in September 2016 where he called for accelerating the PLARF’s pace of development and “breakthroughs . . . in strategic deterrence capability.”

The PLARF is developing and testing several new variants of missiles and developing methods to counter ballistic missile defenses. China’s conventional missile force includes the CSS-6 SRBM (range 725-850 km); the CSS-7 SRBM (600 km); the CSS-11 SRBM (over 700 km); land-attack and anti-ship variants of the CSS-5 MRBM (approximately 1,500 km); the DF-26 IRBM (approximately 4,000 km); and the CJ-10 ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) (approximately 1,500 km). China’s conventionally armed CSS-5 Mod 5 (DF-21D) anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) variant gives the PLA the capability to attack ships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific Ocean. The DF-21D has a range exceeding 1,500 km, is fitted with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) warhead, and is claimed to be capable of rapidly reloading in the field. The PLARF continues to grow its IRBM inventories, including that of the DF-26, which it first fielded in 2016. The DF-26 is capable of conducting conventional and nuclear precision strikes against ground targets as well as conventional strikes against naval targets in the western Pacific and Indian Oceans and the South China Sea.

***

China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win (Washington, DC: Defense Intelligence Agency, 2019).

Click here to download a cached copy.

Watch the accompanying video here.

 p. 91

APPENDIX D: PLA Rocket Force

The Rocket Force is fielding conventional MRBMs to increase the range at which it can conduct precision strikes against land targets and naval ships (including aircraft carriers) operating from China’s shores out to the first island chain—the islands running from the Kurils, through Taiwan, to Borneo, roughly encompassing the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. The CSS-5 Mod-5/ DF-21D has a range exceeding 1,500 kilometers and has a maneuverable warhead. During the PLA’s 90th anniversary parade in 2017, China displayed a new MRBM designated the DF-16G, which China claims features high accuracy, short preparation time, and an improved maneuverable terminal stage that can better infiltrate missile defense systems.258

China unveiled the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) during its September 2015 military parade in Beijing. The DF-26 is capable of conducting precision strikes against ground targets and contributes to China’s counter-intervention posture in the Asia-Pacific region. During the parade, official public statements also referenced a nuclear version of the DF-26, which, if it has the same guidance capabilities, would give China its first nuclear precision-strike capability against theater targets.

***

Ultrafast Anti-Ship Missiles Offered for Sale,” China Daily, 25 December 2018.

China is promoting an ultrafast anti-ship ballistic missile, said to be the first of its kind in the international market, to buyers seeking a reliable and affordable deterrence against threats from the sea.

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, the nation’s largest maker of missiles, has brought the CM-401 supersonic anti-ship ballistic missile to market, saying it is capable of making rapid, precision strikes against medium-sized or large vessels, or against land targets.

It said the weapon uses a “near-space trajectory”, which means it flies between 20 and 100 kilometers above the earth, and that it maneuvers at hypersonic speeds throughout its flight.

The missile will ascend to a certain altitude until its target is acquired. It will then enter an ultrafast terminal dive toward the target, according to CASIC.

The company said the CM-401 features strong destructive power, good penetration capability and a mix of trajectories. It added that the missile can be mounted on various platforms, such as ships or land-based launch vehicles.

According to the CASIC, the missile flies at an average speed of 1,360 meters per second – 4,900 kilometers per hour – or four times the speed of sound, during most parts of the flight, and reaches a maximum velocity of more than 2,000 m/s, six times the speed of sound as it approaches the target. It can carry a 290-kilogram warhead and has a maximum strike range of 290 km and a hit rate of 90 percent, meaning there will be nine effective hits on target out of 10 shots.

The State-owned defense conglomerate made the missile system public at the 12th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition that was held recently in Zhuhai, Guangdong province.

Meanwhile, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the country’s major rocket maker, recently offered its M20B anti-ship ballistic missile to the international market.

The road-mobile M20B also features supersonic speed and a maneuverable trajectory. Carrying a 480-kg warhead, the missile can hit a ship 120 km to 280 km away. It is suitable for rapid, precision attacks on frigates and destroyers, the academy said.

Before the CM-401 and M20B, all anti-ship missiles available in the international market were sea-skimming models such as China’s C-802 and CM-302 and the United States’ Harpoon.

China is the only country that currently fields anti-ship ballistic missiles. Its DF-21D and DF-26 are called “trump cards” in naval warfare by the Chinese military, but are not allowed for export because of a strike range said to be more than 1,000 km – far exceeding the restrictions on the export of missiles set by the Chinese government.

Wu Peixin, a defense industry observer in Beijing, said that ultrafast anti-ship ballistic missiles like the CM-401 can potentially become a game changer in modern naval operations because it is very difficult for existing air-defense radars and weapons on ships to intercept such missiles due to their unique trajectories and hypersonic speeds. Therefore users will be able to effectively deter an enemy’s vessels, especially aircraft carriers, from approaching their coast, Wu said.

***

FURTHER ANALYSIS OF CHINESE ASBM DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED ISSUES:

Rick Fisher, “An Assessment of China’s Missile Systems at the 12th Zhuhai Airshow,” Epoch Times, 18 November 2018.

… CASIC’s CM-401 Anti-Ship SRBM

CASIC’s new CM-401 solid-fuel, anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is likely the world’s first ship-launched ASBM to be offered for sale. It’s likely based on CASIC’s 295-kilometer (183-mile) range, second-generation BP-12B SRBM introduced in 2016, which uses an infrared or radar guidance system. A cutaway model of the CM-401 shows that it has a radar for terminal guidance. It has an advertised range of 290 kilometers (180 miles), a top speed of Mach 6, and a “mean” or average speed of Mach 4.

Illustrations at Zhuhai show that it’s also capable of interception-avoidance maneuvering. However, the CM-401 is too wide to fit into existing ship vertical launch systems (VLS) sized for surface-to-air missiles, so it requires an inclined box launcher, which would take up deck space on a launch ship.

At Zhuhai, the CM-401 was displayed on a transporter-erector launcher (TEL), perhaps indicating it could equip PLA Navy Coastal Defense units. Based on conversations with CASC officials at an April 2018 Malaysian arms exhibition, it’s also possible that CASC could be modifying its HHQ-16 SAM as an ASBM, which can fit into existing VLS tubes. In addition, university lecture slides leaked in August 2017 from a retired PLA Navy rear admiral indicate the PLA may put longer-range, higher-speed ASBMs on ships, and even equip them with maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle warheads. … …

***

Nikolai Novichkov, “Airshow China 2018: CASIC Unveils CM-401 Anti-Ship Missile System,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 8 November 2018.

The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) unveiled at the 6-11 November Airshow China 2018 defence exhibition in Zhuhai a road-mobile, anti-ship, close-range ballistic missile (CRBM) system featuring the CM-401 supersonic missile.

“The system is intended for rapid and precision strikes against medium-size ships, naval task forces, and offshore facilities,” a CASIС representative told Jane’s, pointing out that the CM-401 anti-ship missile, which is fired from a transporter-erector launcher (TEL), can strike targets at a distance between 15 km and 290 km.

The TEL displayed at the show is capable of carrying two containerised CM-401s. No radar unit or command vehicle were displayed at the show.

According to CASIC, the CM-401 is fitted with a terminal radar guidance unit featuring a nose-mounted gimballed antenna. Once launched, the missile flies along a ballistic trajectory, reaching a near-space altitude. The weapon is stated to have an average speed of Mach 4 and a peak of Mach 6, although it is not clear at what altitudes these speeds are reached.

Control of the missile’s flight takes place via four jet vanes in the motor nozzle and four aerodynamic clipped-delta control surfaces at its rear. The former controls the missile during its boost phase, while the latter controls the missile when it is descending within the atmosphere. The CM-401 engages its target in a high-speed terminal dive attack.

***

Jeremy Page, “China Parades New Missile in Warning to Rivals Abroad—and at Home,” Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2017.

Military display is latest effort by President Xi Jinping to improve standing as party leadership shuffle looms

China unveiled a new, more mobile intercontinental ballistic missile at a parade of advanced weaponry and combat troops, in President Xi Jinping’s latest display of military—and political—muscle.

State television showed at least 16 DF-31AG missiles in Sunday’s parade at the Zhurihe combat-training base in northern China, marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the force that is now known as the People’s Liberation Army.

The DF-31AG is mounted on an all-terrain vehicle so it is harder to track and can be fired from multiple locations, and it could have a longer range than the older DF-31A, which was also displayed and is carried by a vehicle designed mainly for roads, military experts say.

Mr. Xi, wearing combat fatigues and a peaked cap, inspected the troops from an open-top military vehicle before the parade, which featured tanks, helicopters, stealth jet fighters and some 12,000 personnel.

“The world is not peaceful,” Mr. Xi in a speech afterward that invoked his signature political idea of a “China Dream” to build the country into a global economic and military power. “Today we are closer than any other period in history to the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and we need more than any period in history to build a strong people’s military.” …

It is the first time a parade has been held to mark the anniversary since 1949, according to state media, and is the latest in a series of moves that analysts say are designed to boost Mr. Xi’s political standing in the run-up to a reshuffle of the party’s leadership this year. …

China’s parade would have been planned months in advance, analysts said, and wasn’t a direct response to Pyongyang or Washington, but it demonstrated Mr. Xi’s efforts to build a military that can respond to external challenges—including on the Korean Peninsula.

Last year, the Chinese leader launched sweeping military reforms—including cutting 300,000 troops—that are designed to overhaul Soviet-modeled command structures and better prepare the armed forces for combat, at home and abroad if needed. …

Mr. Xi has also sought to assert his authority over the PLA through an anticorruption campaign that ensnared several current and retired generals, and by assuming the new title of “commander-in-chief” last year. …

In June, he inspected PLA troops stationed in Hong Kong in another move to boost his political stature ahead of this fall’s 19th Party Congress, where he’s expected to try to promote allies to the top leadership. …

“By presiding over a landmark parade for a party-loyal PLA growing leaner and meaner by his orders, Xi shows that he is large and in charge in the run-up to the 19th Congress,” said Andrew Erickson, an expert on China’s military at the U.S. Naval War College. “Debuting publicly such a powerful, penetrating deterrent weapon as the DF-31AG ICBM seeks to demonstrate that China commands heightened respect abroad even as it maintains order at home—both central components of Xi’s China Dream.”

China hasn’t provided any details about the DF-31AG, but a model was displayed for the first time this month in an exhibition at Beijing’s Military Museum. Analysts say the missile’s design and name suggest it is an improved version of the DF-31A, but beyond its improved survivability and possibly longer range, it remains unclear what the enhancements are. …

Other equipment in the parade included five J-20 stealth jet fighters and several DF-21D antiship ballistic missiles, which experts say are designed to hit approaching U.S. aircraft carriers in a potential conflict.

Chinese state television said more than 40 percent of the equipment in the parade was being displayed for the first time….

Troops in the parade came from the army, navy and air force but also from two new services created about 18 months ago—the rocket force, which controls conventional and nuclear missiles, and the strategic support force, which handles electronic warfare.

Electronic weaponry on display included equipment designed for electromagnetic countermeasures and aerial drones that can be used for radar-jamming….

***

Zhang Zhihao, “DF-26 Missile Enters Service,” China Daily, 26 April 2018.

The DF-26, China’s new intermediate-range ballistic missile, has officially entered service, a defense ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

The missile has finished its trials and combat testing, and has officially entered service in the Rocket Force of the People’s Liberation Army, Senior Colonel Wu Qian said.

The missile is completely designed by China, and equipped with new and advanced technologies, Wu said. It is capable of rapid nuclear retaliation missions, as well as mid- to long-range precision strikes using conventional warheads.

***

National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, 2017).

Click here to read the full text of the report

Issued four years after the previous iteration, this detailed report is to be welcomed. Perhaps due to the vagaries of bureaucratic processes, it may not mesh perfectly with other official statements, but the data are numerous and no other single source puts them all together like this. The matrices offering specific numbers of each type of missile and related development dates are particularly useful.

***

Henri Kenhmann, “DF-26B : Une Nouvelle Variante de L’ASBM Longue Portée Chinois,” East Pendulum, 8 May 2017.

Les forces des fusées chinoises – forces de dissuasion stratégique du pays – pourrait avoir mené fin Avril un nouvel essai opérationnel du missile balistique DF-26B, variante de l’IRBM / l’ASBM longue portée DF-26, si l’on croit à une vidéo amateur prise dans la Mongolie intérieure.

Filmé visiblement à l’aide d’un téléphone portable, on peut voir que l’auteur tournait autour d’un objet cylindrique d’environ 5 mètres de long et 1,5 mètres de diamètre, sur lequel se trouve une inscription claire de « E/ADF-26B ».

La lettre E ici signifie Er (二 en chinois) qui est l’acronyme de 二炮, ancien nom des forces des fusées chinoise. Et la lettre A est l’acronyme de « Missile » selon la norme de nomination des armements chinois.

Il s’agit donc, si notre première évaluation est exacte, d’un missile balistique de modèle DF-26B des forces des fusées chinoise.

https://youtu.be/sE9oFGejEjs … …

L’ensemble de ces éléments laisse donc penser qu’une unité de combat des forces des fusées chinoises a procédé à ce tir opérationnel en mode « Full Range ».

Sachant que le DF-26 est présenté officiellement comme un missile balistique IRBM, capable d’emporter des charges nucléaires ou conventionnelles, pour frapper les cibles fixes au sol ou les « gros navires » en mouvement, plusieurs possibilités s’offrent à nous pour savoir à quoi correspond cette variante DF-26B :

  1. Une variante Sol-Sol nucléaire
  2. Une variante Sol-Sol conventionnel
  3. Une variante Sol-Mer conventionnel
  4. Une variante de portée rallongée

Mais compte tenu de la portée du tir, le lieu de son lancement et le contexte géopolitique du moment, nous penchons plus sur la 3ème possibilité, à savoir une variante anti-navire longue portée. Cela reste bien sûr à confirmer.

Pour terminer, quand a eu lieu ce tir de DF-26B ?

La vidéo d’amateur a été postée pour la première fois le dimanche 23 Avril. Or, il n’y a eu aucune notification publiée officiellement, comme des NOTAMs par exemple, pour indiquer le tir. Et nous n’avons pas la certitude non plus que la date où la vidéo a été postée correspond à celle du lancement.

En cherchant dans notre base de suivi sur les tirs balistiques chinois qui ont eu lieu avant le 23 Avril, certains pourraient correspondre à la trajectoire recherchée. On peut citer par exemple le tir du 13 Avril, ou le double tir du 15 Avril.

Il est à noter qu’il est possible que ce ne soit pas le premier tir opérationnel de DF-26B. En effet, si l’on compare les photos de l’épave d’un autre tir de DF-26 qui a eu lieu en Août 2016, on retrouve effectivement certaines similitudes. Pour ceux qui sont intéressés, vous pouvez consulter notre dossier « DF-26 : 1er tir opérationnel après l’entrée en service » et faites vos propres idées.

A suivre.

***

Andrew S. Erickson, Evan Braden Montgomery, Craig Neuman, Stephen Biddle, and Ivan Oelrich, “Correspondence: How Good Are China’s Antiaccess/Area-Denial Capabilities?” International Security 41.4 (Spring 2017): 202-13.

Spring 2017, Vol. 41, No. 4, Pages: 202-213

Posted Online April 25, 2017.

(doi:10.1162/ISEC_c_00278)

© 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Full Text  | PDF (72.771 KB)  | PDF Plus (81.027 KB)  | ePub (271 KB)

Andrew S. Erickson

Andrew S. Erickson is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate in research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Evan Braden Montgomery

Evan Braden Montgomery is Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Craig Neuman

Craig Neuman is a major in the U.S. Air Force and earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force or the U.S. government.

Stephen Biddle

Stephen Biddle is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ivan Oelrich

Ivan Oelrich served as Vice President for the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists, and is Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

To the Editors (Andrew S. Erickson writes):

I commend Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich for elucidating a vital topic: China’s antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) development and potential U.S. responses.1 Biddle and Oelrich document China’s growing ability to threaten Taiwan with a blockade; the high cost and risks of any U.S. planning predicated on finding and kinetically striking mobile mainland targets; and the value in the United States, Taiwan, and regional allies enhancing their own countermeasures. Geography, technology, and physics matter— and interact powerfully, requiring sober consideration. However, mistaken assumptions and oversimplifications in describing these interactions risk underestimating how far China could extend credible combat power offshore. Emerging anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) capabilities aside, China’s current sea- and air-launched anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) capability already exceeds the seaward limits asserted by Biddle and Oelrich. Thus, contrary to their article’s optimistic projections, the United States and its regional allies already face a more challenging and uncertain military situation.

Part of the problem is conceptual: Biddle and Oelrich conflate A2/AD with outright military control, when it is actually a more easily operationalized concept of sowing doubt through growing risk of denial. Most fundamentally, in categorically dismissing the possibility of China achieving A2/AD beyond 400–600 kilometers seaward by 2040, they not only ignore capabilities that China has already achieved—or is close to achieving, per its Near Seas Active Defense strategy—but, worse, dismiss nearly two and a half decades of potential future Chinese improvement, powered by what is already the world’s second-largest economy and defense budget. Few analysts in 1992 imagined….

  1. Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, “Future Warfare in the Western Paciªc: Chinese Antiaccess/ Area Denial, U.S. AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia,” International Security, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Summer 2016), pp. 7–48. Further references to this article appear parenthetically in the text.

International Security, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Spring 2017), pp. 202–213, doi:10.1162/ISEC_c_00278 © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

***

Andrew S. Erickson, “Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development and Counter-intervention Efforts,” testified at Hearing on China’s Advanced Weapons held by U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 23 February 2017.

Click here to watch a video of the hearing:

00:16:00 – 01:49:00 — Overall timeframe for Panel I: “China’s Hypersonic and Maneuverable Re-Entry Vehicle Programs”

00:16:00 – 00:23:57 — Introductory remarks from Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew and Senator Jim Talent

00:31:47 – 00:38:52 — My oral testimony

00:51:12 – 00:52:19 — I discuss the essence of China’s potential ASBM challenge: speed is a double-edged sword.

00:57:51 – 00:59:03 — I underscore the importance of avoiding unintended effects in pursuing confidence-building measures: both land- and sea-based capabilities matter.

01:06:47 – 01:08:17 — I make the case that Congress must keep focus and funding consistent to pace emerging challenges and thereby safeguard American interests.

01:10:52 – 01:15:04 — I outline American national interests regarding the South China Sea, and highlight the importance of addressing Chinese activities there, particularly concerning any possible dredging and fortification of Scarborough Shoal.

01:17:46 – 01:20:29 — I explain the importance of safeguarding sensitive technologies and supporting America’s defense industrial base.

01:21:56 – 01:24:25 — I outline the military utility of China’s augmentation and fortification of features in the South China Sea. Left unaddressed, such actions could transform a vital, open part of the global commons into what my colleague Prof. Peter Dutton terms a “strategic strait” (a body of water, like the Strait of Hormuz, susceptible to closure by land-based weapons).

01:34:19 – 01:38:25 — I sum up the nature and degree of China’s counter-intervention challenge to U.S. and allied forces, from high-end ASBMs to low-end Maritime Militia. I connect this challenge to relevant American policy priorities and the cost-benefit ratio of potential countermeasures.

01:42:35 – 01:44:43 — In response to Commissioner Larry Wortzel’s query about examples of research collaboration among Chinese linguists and technical experts within the U.S. government, I explained that the Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute volume on “Chinese Naval Shipbuilding,” published with U.S. Naval Institute in December 2016, was the product of just such an intensive synergy.

Professor Andrew S. Erickson_Testimony before Hearing on China’s Advanced Weapons_USCC_20170223_Chinese Naval Shipbuilding

MY FULL-LENGTH WRITTEN TESTIMONY:

Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development and Counter-intervention Efforts

Andrew S. Erickson[1]

Testimony before Hearing on China’s Advanced Weapons

Panel I: China’s Hypersonic and Maneuverable Re-Entry Vehicle Programs

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Washington, DC

23 February 2017

The views expressed here are those of the author alone. They do not represent the estimates or policies of the U.S. Navy or any other organization of the U.S. government.

China has two functional anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) types with maneuverable re-entry vehicle technology, and is developing and proving the reconnaissance-strike complex to target those missiles effectively under realistic, challenging conditions. This has rightly triggered growing concern, as part of a larger pattern: In what it considers the “Near Seas” (the Yellow, East China, and the South China seas),

  • Beijing enjoys powerful synergies and advantages regarding the disputed sovereignty claims it pursues there,
  • increasingly in defiance of regional stability and international laws and norms,
  • and supported by precision-targeted systems designed to make American intervention risky and challenge American sea control.

China has developed and deployed small numbers of one dedicated operational ASBM, the DF-21D (CSS-5) medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM).[2] It has also developed a second ASBM, the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM).[3] While remaining limitations in China’s reconnaissance-strike complex, along with evolving American and allied countermeasures, continue to render their operational effectiveness uncertain, they are clearly purpose-designed ASBMs of major potential capability.

Today, I will (1) highlight China’s ASBM development thus far, (2) survey the related space-based architecture that China is building to provide a reconnaissance-strike complex necessary to target the missiles with maximum effectiveness, and (3) offer policy recommendations.

Here are my key points:

  • With its ambitious ASBM development, China is challenging U.S. Asia-Pacific interests and military influence in new ways.
  • This is part of a much larger Chinese counter-intervention effort that is advancing significantly regardless of precise ASBM capabilities or limitations.
  • While China’s missiles pose potential challenges to U.S. forces, ensuring that they can be targeted effectively is expensive and creates growing space-based electromagnetic spectrum vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

Here are my key recommendations. U.S. policymakers should:

  • enhance efforts at developing corresponding tailored countermeasures, particularly concerning electronic warfare.
  • attempt to ensure that China does not develop Scarborough Shoal into a key targeting node in the South China Sea.
  • and enhance U.S. Navy (USN) ship numbers to avoid presenting China with an over-concentrated target set.

Background and Developments to Date

Since at least the mid-1990s, Beijing has pursued ASBMs as part of a panoply of counter-intervention capabilities.[4] The PLA seeks to hold adversaries’ vessels at risk via devastating multi-axis strikes involving precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles launched from a variety of land-, surface-, submarine-, and air-based platforms in coordinated attacks.

The intention of this counter-intervention capability is to achieve control across the Near Seas and their immediate approaches; and to exert peacetime deterrence (to both uphold and further China’s unresolved territorial and maritime claims in these same waters). The ways Chinese strategists have envisioned involve exploiting China’s strategic depth as a hybrid land-sea power operating along interior lines and using the strategic rocket forces to enable China’s preferred approach of “using the land to control the sea.” The means involve developing and deploying asymmetric capabilities along the lines espoused by paramount leader Jiang Zemin in 1999: “That which the enemy fears most, that is what we must develop.” Jiang used the occasion of the accidental bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade that year—which shocked and outraged China’s leadership—to initiate and reinforce existing megaprojects to build what were termed ‘assassin’s mace weapons,’ including the ASBM.[5]

Beijing’s 3 September 2015 military parade showcased nearly a dozen ballistic missile variants, including two Chinese ASBMs, the DF-21D and DF-26.[6] All are operational in some form in what, since 31 December 2015, is termed the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF); now an independent military service thanks to current paramount leader Xi Jinping’s ongoing reforms to restructure the PLA to prevail in “informatized local wars.”[7] Official commentary at the event dubbed the DF-21D a “road-mobile anti-ship ballistic missile, the assassin’s mace for maritime asymmetric warfare.”[8] The Pentagon’s 2016 PLA report states that “China continues to field an ASBM based on a variant of the CSS-5 (DF-21) MRBM that it began deploying in 2010. The CSS-5 Mod 5 has a range of 1,500 km and is armed with a MaRV [Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle] [which] gives the PLA the capability to attack ships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific Ocean.”[9] During the first half of February 2016, China Daily reports, the DF-21D was involved in a ten-vehicle simulated launch drill in southern China.[10] While this tested the crew’s ability to prepare and launch a missile, however, it says nothing of specific capabilities.

Anticipated publicly by the Pentagon in 2010,[11] China’s DF-26, has a reported range of 3,000-4,000 km, sufficient to strike Guam and surrounding sea areas.[12] It was similarly forecast, although with name unspecified, in a Global Times article on 18 February 2011.[13] As the September 2015 military parade commentary stated, in dubbing the missile “a new weapon for strategic deterrence,” it “can perform medium- to long-range precision attack on both land and large- to medium-sized maritime targets.” Variants of this missile are “capable of nuclear and conventional strike,” the latter including both land attack and being “capable of targeting large- and medium-sized targets on water.”

In November 2015, China Youth Daily published an article by two researchers at the PLA’s leading academic research organ, the PLA Academy of Military Science.[14] It represents the most authoritative, comprehensive Chinese public analysis to date on the DF-26. They state that the DF-26 “does not rely on a site for mobile launching. It can move fast, and it has no strict demands for where it is launched.”

The researchers claim, perhaps hyperbolically, “Against time-sensitive targets such as surface ships in particular, it [the DF-26] can attack at the last minute as soon as information on a ship’s movement is acquired, meaning the ship cannot get away.” This suggests that its seeker can view a large portion of the ocean, and that in the PLA’s eyes, the targeted ship cannot steam or maneuver outside of the missile’s ability to detect and effectively attack its intended target.

This is part of a larger dynamic, they believe, in which “using speed to get the upper hand is one of the fundamental mechanisms by which to secure victory in modern integrated joint operations. The DF-26 has numerous ‘fast’ features such as fast switch between nuclear and conventional, fast road movement, fast launch preparation, and fast displacement and withdrawal. Those features suit that mechanism for victory. And because of that, the DF-26 has greater deterrence and real-war power.” In a pattern typical of Chinese writings, in which external sources are sometimes cited to suggest information that might be difficult to state directly, the researchers also mention that some analysts “have pointed out that the range of the DF-26 is twice that of the DF-21D, and the scope of its attack can extend to the Second Island Chain.”

To date, there is still no public reporting of China having conducted an integrated overwater test of either of its ASBMs against an uncooperative target. Internet rumors claim a cooperative test was conducted against the space event support ship Yuan Wang 4, but there is insufficient evidence to substantiate this. Better documented, in Google Earth imagery beginning on 6 September 2006, are one or more tests in the Gobi desert against a concrete slab apparently representing a carrier’s hangar deck—tests conducted perhaps with the assistance of the Beidou/Compass positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) satellite system.[15] Such efforts, China’s overall missile capabilities and program trajectories, and public statements by government officials and reports in the United States and Taiwan—together with the appearance of the DF-21D and -26 in the 2015 military parade—make it clear that the missiles themselves work. The parade appearance suggests China considers the missiles to be minimally operational and capable of achieving a measure of deterrence. It is even possible that China is pursuing testing and other capability demonstrations in a fashion designed to alert and deter other military forces, while thus far refraining from publicizing such activities for fear of failure or of fueling foreign publics’ support for military efforts to counter China’s own.

Notably, however, the ability of China’s reconnaissance-strike complex to provide accurate targeting for its ASBMs remains unclear. Based on physics and deductive logic, onboard ASBM sensors likely center on radar[16] with some resemblance to that of the retired American Pershing II MRBM, albeit with appropriate technological advances and modified to distinguish moving (vice fixed) targets from the sea surface (which changes rapidly, unlike the ground surface, with significant implications for clutter generated and the challenges in mitigating it).

Chinese experts have clearly studied the Pershing II exhaustively, including its terminal guidance system.[17] They may well have accessed and incorporated and/or emulated many of its specific technologies in their ASBM development efforts, including the missile’s shape and its unusually large maneuver fins.[18] Beyond that, open sources reveal few reliable details about Chinese ASBM sensors, MARVs, and related parameters and capabilities. Available Chinese technical writings are typically historical or theoretical in nature. Many contain basic research that demonstrates understanding of mathematical algorithms used to calculate maneuver. Some appear to integrate Pershing II-related diagrams directly.[19] Few document specific Chinese developments or more complex calculations pertaining to a realistic operational environment. A classic “bath tub” pattern over time—involving a dip in the availability of such sources and a transformation of their contents—suggests that this lack of information stems not from Chinese limitations per se but rather an effort to conceal sensitive details. In sum, this appears to be a case in which open sources paint a useful picture overall, but do not reveal all the specifics.[20]

Growing Reconnaissance-Strike Complex

China has command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities relevant to the task of targeting ships at sea, and is extending and integrating that architecture, but would benefit from further progress. Unfortunately, such operations’ command-and-control cannot be verified conclusively through open sources. Finally, the difficulty of targeting China’s ASBMs increases significantly with distance from China’s shore. It seems particularly unlikely that China currently has C4ISR coverage sufficient to target the DF-26 ASBM variant towards the maximum extent of its range. Chinese ASBMs could, in theory, be employed at shorter-than-maximum ranges through some combination of lofted trajectory and blow-out ports to vent combustion, but available Chinese sources do not address this possibility.

Beyond fielding the C4ISR hardware and integrating its use and exploitation in a technical sense, however, this ASBM system of systems involves integrating a geographically- and bureaucratically-disparate set of C4ISR resources across the PLA’s services and departments. The ASBM’s reconnaissance-strike complex likely includes a combination of satellites and land-based radars—possibly augmented temporarily and imperfectly with deployment of microsatellites and even unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).[21]

ASBMs require the provision of accurate “third-party” or over-the-horizon (OTH) targeting support that integrates disparate information from multiple sources. OTH-B sky wave (backscatter) radars, which refract high-frequency (HF) radio waves off the ionosphere, are useful for cueing, although they cannot support a more refined targeting solution. China has reportedly been working on OTH-B since 1986.[22] Today, it has at least one OTH-B radar in active use and another under construction.[23] If it does not already have an OTH-B radar covering the South China Sea, it is likely to have one eventually.[24] In coming years, China will almost certainly desire and achieve a set of OTH-B radars covering its entire maritime periphery. OTH radars can benefit when stable, warm air layers—particularly in the troposphere and ionosphere—produce atmospheric ducts that enable radio signals to follow Earth’s curvature for extended distances.[25] These conditions are sometimes present off China’s coast. Nevertheless, successful targeting is a difficult challenge to achieve in practice: detecting and identifying a target may be relatively straightforward, but tracking it and passing information to shooting platform(s) in real time or near-real time is difficult and time-pressed. Applying rules of engagement and avoiding collateral damage represent additional hurdles. Challenges grow with time, distance, and speed. Space-based surveillance is therefore essential to the employment of an ASBM. China has launched diverse satellites at impressive rates lately, but still confronts multiple challenges:

  • designing and emplacing functional satellites in desired orbits represents numerous, expensive difficulties;
  • a complex surveillance architecture whose components are controlled by different organizations may be unwieldy;
  • and real-time data fusion is complicated by a highly ‘stovepiped’ military organization.[26]

To target mobile maritime platforms, China must master a complex process: correlating and fusing real-time sensor inputs, and then disseminating accurate situation reports and targeting packages to commanders and shooters. Even when it achieves complete coverage of relevant maritime zones, data transmission (from satellites to ground stations), imagery readouts by analysts (increasing in time consumption with size of area examined) and sending targeting data to the shooter will impose time delays. The PLA must coordinate among the many service elements that ‘own’ various ISR sensor and ground station architecture and within the chain of command that would authorize their prioritization and use, in addition to the release authority for the weapons systems that would employ their inputs.

China’s establishment of the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) on 31 December 2015 appears in part to be an attempt to address these challenges by better integrating space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities.[27] Extensive launch plans and concerted efforts at integration suggest that in coming years, China is likely to achieve a robust remote sensing architecture for finding aircraft carriers and other large surface vessels.

By offering reliable location signals, PNT satellites in China’s growing Beidou/Compassconstellation help implement targeting by helping to ensure that a missile reaches a desired location. If the intended latitude-longitude location is correct in practice, then the missile should see the target and strike it. Such satellite navigation offers a linchpin that the USSR could never achieve through its more limited focus on inertial navigation. Additionally, the constellation’s text message communications function supports reconnaissance and reporting. China has launched nearly thirty Beidou/Compass PNT satellites (the latest on 12 June 2016). Twenty are currently functional in orbit. First operational as Beidou I in 2000, the system went operational with 10 satellites as Beidou II in 2011, and achieved regional coverage in 2012. China appears on track to achieve its goal of a 35-satellite constellation with global coverage by 2020.[28]

Imaging satellites, based of necessity in low-earth orbit, take snapshots of pre-designated areas at periodic and predictable times. Examining satellites’ numbers, orbits, inclinations, and periods therefore offers a general sense of coverage. China’s reconnaissance-capable satellites include electro-optical (EO), multi- and hyperspectral; as well as radar satellites, especially synthetic aperture radar (SAR) variants. SAR satellites can provide targeting information, while other satellites can facilitate target identification. Maritime-relevant variants include the Fengyun, China-Brazil Earth Resources (CBERS), ZiyuanHaiyangHuanjingYaoganGaofen, and Jilinsatellites.

Three of the abovementioned satellite series—YaoganGaofen, and Jilin—are particularly relevant to maritime monitoring and targeting. “Operating from near-polar, Sun-Synchronous Orbits (SSO),” according to IHS Jane’s, China’s Yaogan series of well over 30 currently-operational advanced, paired, SAR and EO remote sensing satellites “may provide multi-wavelength, overlapping, continuous medium-resolution, global imagery of military targets.”[29]

In total, China has launched 40 Yaogans to date, with Yaogan-30 launched on 15 May 2016; the vast majority of these satellites remain in orbit and functional. The Yaogan-9-, -16, -17, -20, and -25-A, B, and C tri-satellite constellations may constitute the largest share of a China’s space-based ship tracking and targeting ISR network. Flying in triangular formation in similar orbits at identical inclination, according to IHS Jane’s, each contains an EO surveillance satellite, a SAR satellite, and possibly a signals- or electronic-intelligence (ELINT) satellite: “Designed for location and tracking of foreign warships, the satellites collect optical and radio electronic signatures of naval vessels that are used in conjunction with other information by the Chinese Navy…. They are thought to be able to find and track large Western warships, providing accurate positioning data for targeting by land-based [ASBMs].”[30] This is similar to the first and second generations of the USN’s White Cloud Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS), which reportedly detected surface vessels by sensing their electronic emissions and locating them using time delay of arrival (TDOA). Such a TDOA approach would allow a bearing fix through a division of labor in which an ELINT satellite would provide a precise pointing vector, a SAR satellite would process the location, and an EO satellite would confirm the identity of the target.[31]

The Yaogan-9 system has likely largely been superseded, as Yaogan-9B has apparently fragmented into two pieces. This would follow a pattern in which China’s first satellite of a given type often has short mission life and/or other limitations, but is succeeded by more capable variant(s). In addition to the aforementioned four operational sets of Yaogan triplets possibly containing SAR satellites, the most useful for ASBM targeting are the additional eight YaoganSAR satellites orbited to date (of which only Yaogan-1 is clearly no longer operational). SAR satellites measure potential targets’ speed and range changes independent of weather. Only such active sensors as SAR can offer the most targetable information; EO and IR counterparts face far more limitations.[32]

Additionally, the next-generation Gaofen remote sensing satellites are being launched as part of the China High-definition Earth Observation System (CHEOS) state megaproject to provide continuous near-real-time weather-independent global surveillance. To date, this includes the Gaofen-1, -2, -3, -4, -8, and -9 satellites.[33] Gaofen-5 and -6 are scheduled for orbit later this year. The first will carry a visible light-near infrared hyperspectral camera, the second a panchromatic camera and two multispectral cameras: resolution and wide-angle. Gaofen-7’s launch is anticipated in 2018-19. It will carry a hyperspectral, stereographic cartography camera.[34]

Finally, in October 2015, China launched the first four satellites in its Jilin remote sensing series. They included a high-definition multi-spectral imaging satellite, two video imaging satellites, and a satellite for “imaging technique testing.”[35] By 2019, China plans to have sixteen Jilin satellites orbiting in a global network “capable of a three to four hours update in the data provided.” By 2020, this is slated to grow to sixty satellites with 30 minutes’ update, which is potentially more than adequate for ASBM targeting. Finally, by 2030, the goal is for China to have “138 satellites in orbit, forming an all-day, all-weather, full spectrum acquisition segment data and a capability of observing any global arbitrary point with a 10 minutes revisit capability, providing the world’s highest spatial resolution and time resolution space information products.”[36]

China has thus made tremendous progress already, and is doubtlessly working hard to improve further in all these areas. Xi has launched sweeping reforms to make the PLA more joint and better structured to wage modern wars. As part of these ongoing efforts, China is constantly extending and improving its reconnaissance-strike complex. It is launching satellites at a pace that only the United States and Russia can hope to match.[37] This is rapidly increasing China’s space-based reconnaissance architecture.

For much of its ASBM operations, for the foreseeable future China must rely heavily on space-based capabilities that are expensive and difficult to implement with maximum effectiveness. With regard to the South China Sea, however, China is developing targeting solutions that are much cheaper, simpler, easier to use. It is doing so by turning its outposts there into a ring of stations for land-based and airborne radars.

China reportedly began developing high-frequency (HF) ground wave (surface wave) OTH sensors in 1967, with the first designed to have a detection range of 250 km.[38] In the South China Sea, it has already established HF surface wave radar installations on the majority of the Spratly features that it occupies, which it has radically augmented and is now fortifying.[39]Assuming a typical effective range of 278-370 km (150-200 nautical miles), and deployment of other such radars on the other Spratly and Paracels features it occupies, as well as on land to the north; as well as airborne radars on maritime patrol aircraft operating from features’ runways, this should be sufficient to ensure “eyes on” all areas of the South China Sea. It would enable China to detect and report a carrier strike group across the vast majority of the South China Sea. This constant surveillance should support accurate fire control for both ASBMs and cruise missiles. This enhanced maritime domain awareness would offer China both a relatively cost-effective way to fill remaining coverage gaps and a major targeting advantage that is difficult to negate without major escalation.[40]

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

China has deployed one ASBM variant and developed another, thus far, and is enhancing its reconnaissance-strike to target the missiles with maximum effectiveness. The capabilities of Chinese ASBMs depend on many factors, but they certainly represent a potential challenge to U.S. forces that could become grave if not addressed properly. Assessing China’s ASBM combat effectiveness cannot be resolved with open sources, and may well not fully be certain to any observer in the absence of its actual use in combat. Any attempt at net assessment must consider capabilities against countermeasures.

If developed and deployed successfully, a Chinese ASBM system-of-systems would be the world’s first system capable of targeting a moving carrier group with long-range ballistic missiles fired from land-based mobile launchers. Terminal defenses against such missiles will be difficult and expensive, and attempts to destroy the missiles before launch highly escalatory. If technology development unfolds in such a way that a Chinese ASBM could overcome the best American efforts at active and passive countermeasures, China would have unilaterally and fundamentally altered the Western Pacific security dynamic.

For over a decade, the U.S. military has clearly been taking China’s ASBM potential seriously. Since at least the first public U.S. government mention of Chinese ASBM development in a 2004 Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report,[41] U.S. military leaders and other spokespeople have underscored this and other counter-intervention challenges, while expressing confidence that U.S. and allied countermeasures were keeping pace with them. This is an ongoing competition between offense and defense, however. It is currently not clear which side has a temporary or permanent advantage. Progress might be difficult in some respects: not impossible, but not cheap. Countermeasures may be quite expensive; but so too may be China’s burgeoning space-based reconnaissance architecture and the ground-based infrastructure to operate it, dwarfing the cost of ASBM missiles themselves.

While China’s ASBMs and other missiles pose potential challenges to U.S. forces, ensuring that they can be targeted effectively is expensive and creates growing vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Washington and its regional allies are rightly placing emphasis on targeting cost-effectively some of the greatest Chinese vulnerabilities, particularly by developing capabilities to sever—or at least disrupt—the many links in the ASBM ‘kill chain.’[42] In particular, as explained in the previous section, Chinese ASBM operations almost certainly necessitate the extensive, expensive employment of space-based sensors to provide the timely targeting information required, to allow missile-based sensors to complete a successful attack.

This renders China vulnerable to electronic warfare (EW) countermeasures such as jamming; satellite-ground data links cannot be shielded in the way that Chinese forces such as the PLARF protect homeland-based communications with fiber optic cable networks.[43] Most fundamentally, EW can exploit an ASBM’s reliance on speed. Speed is the ASBM’s greatest strength: it may arrive on target before uncertainty builds concerning its latest location. But speed is also the ASBM’s greatest weakness: if confused, the ASBM may run out of room to maneuver before it figures out what it is actually seeing. By digitally capturing and retransmitting RF signals, Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) jammers could greatly facilitate such confusion.[44] More broadly, EW countermeasures can exploit ongoing Chinese limitations in operational “jointness” and data fusion, as well as the lack of experience with real-time decision-making and delegation of authority concerning sophisticated long-range precision strike. They may do so in a cost-effective manner, and even limit escalation by employing temporary “soft kills” as opposed to permanent, physically destructive “hard kills.”

EW thus has considerable potential, and U.S. planners should reenergize efforts in developing tailored countermeasures in this area. Here, USN efforts during the Cold War to confuse the Soviet Ocean Surveillance System may be instructive.[45] But the stakes are high: China is already adopting efforts to overcome the jamming capabilities that U.S. forces developed for Russian ELINT Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite (EORSATS), including via the abovementioned TDOA process. Notably, it is launching a ratio of EO to other surveillance satellites that suggest it is attempting to use the EO satellites to verify electromagnetic emissions that might be spoofed.

With its ambitious ASBM development, China is challenging American Asia-Pacific interests and military influence in new ways. This is part of a much larger Chinese counter-intervention effort that is advancing significantly regardless of precise ASBM capabilities or limitations. Beyond ASBM-specific countermeasures, U.S. policymakers must understand and address two larger, interrelated issues:

  • First, the far broader counter-intervention challenge that China’s military-maritime forces pose to the regional interests and security of the United States and its East Asian allies and partners.
  • Second, the risk of U.S. capabilities and influence eroding if China is able to exploit a USN target set of capabilities concentrated in too few ships.

U.S. policy-makers should attempt to ensure that China does not develop Scarborough Shoal into a key targeting node in the South China Sea. As part of developing the capability to implement an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), for instance, developments such as ongoing fortification of Chinese-held features and China’s possible dredging and buildup of Scarborough Shoal merit particularly concerted observation and opposition. Recent concerns by Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana that China will likely dredge Scarborough Reef and establish an outpost could signal Chinese intentions and capabilities regarding development of both an ADIZ and a more potent reconnaissance-strike complex.[46]

In coordination with the PLARF and China’s other sea forces and services, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is increasingly capable of contesting American sea control within widening range rings surrounding the Near Seas. At the high-end, the world’s largest conventional ballistic missile force, including ASBMs; as well as road-mobile nuclear ICBMs and other advanced systems; offer a land-based “anti-navy” deterrence backstop. The Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI)’s latest conference volume, Chinese Naval Shipbuilding, has probed this challenge deeply.[47] Its key findings include the following:

China’s shipbuilding industry has already produced a fleet of several hundred (currently in the low-300s; 303 per the Pentagon’s 2016 report)[48] increasingly-advanced warships capable of “flooding the zone” along the contested East Asian littoral. When several hundred ships each from China’s Coast Guard and its most advanced Maritime Militia units are factored in, Beijing’s numerical preponderance for the “home game” scenarios it prioritizes becomes formidable indeed.

Central to this Chinese counter-intervention challenge is the PLAN’s overmatching of the USN in missile loadouts. This disparity is likely to worsen as China deploys greater quantities of missiles with greater ranges than those systems potentially employed by the USN against them. In addition to two types of operational land-based ASBMs, by 2020, China is expected to have:

  • quantitative parity or better in surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs),
  • parity in missile launch cells,
  • and quantitative inferiority only in multi-mission land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs).

As with the platforms on which they are based, these Chinese weapons are concentrated in the Near Seas, while their American counterparts are dispersed globally. Worse still, the next-generation long-range ASCMs on which U.S. naval superiority hinges are still “paper missiles” not yet fielded on USN surface combatants. Moreover, these new ASCMs—the Long-Range Antiship Missile (LRASM) and vertical launch system-compatible Naval Strike Missile variant—may not be effectively targetable under contested counter-intervention conditions.

Moreover, by 2020, the PLAN will be unambiguously the world’s second largest blue water navy. ONI projects a fleet of 313-342 hulls.[49] If current trends continue, by 2030 China may assemble a combat fleet that in terms of overall order of battle (hardware only) is quantitatively, and perhaps even qualitatively, in the same league as the USN. Even the perception that China was on track to achieving such parity would gravely harm America’s standing and influence across the Asia-Pacific and around the world.

In addition to targeting the “kill chain” of Chinese ASBMs, U.S. policy-makers must close the abovementioned missile deployment and capability gap. They should also ensure that the U.S. has enough well-equipped Navy vessels available for use in key operational areas, particularly throughout maritime East Asia. Deploying sufficient numbers would maximize peacetime presence and influence. It would deter a worst-case contingency by demonstrating capacity for overwhelming kinetic operations therein (“Peace Through Strength”) via dispersed, distributed lethality. Enhancing USN fleet numbers can help avoid presenting China with an over-concentrated target set of “too many eggs in too few baskets.” Lacking sufficient ASBM countermeasures and numbers of ships and missiles, by contrast, would imperil regional stability and security—and with them, vital American interests.

Notes:

[1] This testimony elaborates on and updates Andrew S. Erickson, “Raining Down: Assessing the Emergent ASBM Threat,” Jane’s Navy International, 16 March 2016, www.janes.com.

[2] Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016, Annual Report to Congress [Hereafter: “DoD (2016)”] (Arlington, VA: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 13 May 2016), http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2016%20China%20Military%20Power%20Report.pdf, 25, 61, 67; U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Chapter 2, Section 3, “China’s Offensive Missile Forces,” 2015 Annual Report to Congress, November 2015, 352-353, 372-373; National Defense Report Editing Committee, 2011 ROC National Defense Report, Ministry of National Defense, (August 2011), http://2011mndreport.mnd.gov.tw/en/minister.html, 71.

[3] The Pentagon’s latest China report mentions another variant of the DF-26 but makes no mention of deployment status. DoD (2016), 35, 70, 77.

[4] Timothy Heath and Andrew S. Erickson, “Is China Pursuing Counter-Intervention?” The Washington Quarterly 38.3 (fall 2015): 143-56, https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/TWQ_Fall2015_Heath-Erickson.pdf.

[5] Andrew S. Erickson, Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implications (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2013), http://www.andrewerickson.com/2013/05/chinese-anti-ship-ballistic-missile-development-drivers-trajectories-and-strategic-implications/.

[6] Andrew S. Erickson, “Showtime: China Reveals Two ‘Carrier-Killer’ Missiles,” The National Interest, 3 September 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/showtime-china-reveals-two-carrier-killer-missiles-13769.

[7] Michael S. Chase and Arthur Chan, “China’s Evolving Strategic Deterrence Concepts and Capabilities,” The Washington Quarterly 39.1 (Spring 2016): 117–136, https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/TWQ_Spring2016_Chase-Chan.pdf.

[8] This and all subsequent parade-related commentary is derived from Andrew S. Erickson, “Showtime: China Reveals Two ‘Carrier-Killer’ Missiles.”

[9] Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016, Annual Report to Congress (Arlington, VA: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 13 May 2016), 25, 67, http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2016%20China%20Military%20Power%20Report.pdf.

[10] Zhao Lei, “Anti-Ship Rocket ‘Included in Drills’,” China Daily, 16 February 2016, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-02/16/content_23496831.htm.

[11] The report stated: “China’s ballistic missile force is acquiring conventional…intermediate-range ballistic missiles that extend the distance at which it can threaten other countries with conventional precision or near-precision strikes.” Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010, Annual Report to Congress (Arlington, VA: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2010), 33, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2010_CMPR_Final.pdf.

[12] The Pentagon suggests that the DF-26 will be able to reach Guam, which implies a range of at least 3,000 km, the rough distance from China’s coast to Guam. Perhaps a range of 3,200-3,300 km would be sufficient to accommodate principal inland firing locations. DoD (2016), 67. Jane’s reports a range of 3,000-4,000 km. “DF-26,” Jane’s Strategic Weapon Systems, 16 February 2016.

[13] Song Shengxia, Zhang Han, and Huang Jingjing, “New Missile ‘Ready by 2015’: Global Times,” People’s Daily Online, 18 February 2011, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90786/7292006.html.

[14] 王长勤、方光明 [Wang Changqin and Fang Guangming], 军事科学院 [Academy of Military Science], “我们为什么要发展东风-26弹道导弹” [Why We Had to Develop the Dongfeng-26 Ballistic Missile], 中国青年报 [China Youth Daily], 30 November 2015, 9, http://www.andrewerickson.com/2015/12/academy-of-military-science-researchers-why-we-had-to-develop-the-dongfeng-26-ballistic-missile-bilingual-text-analysis-links/.

[15] “PLA ‘Sinks’ US Carrier in DF-21D Missile Test in Gobi,” Want China Times, 23 January 2013, http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id= 20130123000112&cid=1101.

[16] An ASBM’s reentry speed and need to lock on target at substantial distance likely precludes effective use of millimeter wave radar. Infrared is subject to reentry friction and is easily jammed. Discussion with technical expert, 15 January 2017.

[17] See, for example, Xie Yu and Pan Liang, College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha; Yuan Tianbao, Second Artillery Force Equipment Academy, “Trajectory Planning for Reentry Maneuverable Ballistic Missiles,” International Conference on Manufacturing Science and Engineering (ICMSE 2015), 8-15; Shi-Xue Tsai, “Introduction to the Scene Matching Guidance Technologies,” Promotion of Chinese Aviation Between Centuries: Proceedings of Conference for 30th Anniversary of CSAA’s Establishment, No. 10 (1994) 3.1 (1996), 227-37.

[18] Andrew S. Erickson and David D. Yang, “Using the Land to Control the Sea? Chinese Analysts Consider the Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile,” Naval War College Review 62.4 (Autumn 2009): 53-86, esp. 59, https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/f5cd3bb5-a1d1-497d-ab70-257b9502d13e/Using-the-Land-to-Control-the-Sea–Chinese-Analyst.aspx.

[19] Consider, for instance, the striking resemblance among the diagrams in the following four sources: “Figure 2-5. Typical [Pershing II] Missile Trajectory,” Pershing II Weapon System, Technical/Operators Manual, (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army: 1 June 1986), 2-8; “图 1 带有末制导的导弹飞行弹道示意图” [Fig. 1 Schematic Diagram of Guided-Missile Ballistic Trajectory With Terminal Guidance], 谭守林、张大巧, 第二炮兵工程学院 [Tan Shoulin and Zhang Daqiao, Second Artillery Engineering College] and 刁国修, 中国人民 解放军96311部队 [Diao Guoxiu, PLA Unit 96311, Huaihua], “弹道导弹打击航空母舰 末制导有效区的确定与评估” [Determination and Evaluation of Effective Range for Terminal-Guidance Ballistic Missile(s) Attacking Aircraft Carrier(s)], 指挥控制与仿真 [Command Control and Simulation] 28, no. 4 (August 2006), 7, republished as “Figure 4. Schematic Diagram of Missile Flight Trajectory with Terminal Guidance,” Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2009, Annual Report to Congress Arlington, VA: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2009), 21, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/China_Military_Power_Report_2009.pdf.

[20] Unless otherwise specified, data in this paragraph are derived from Andrew S. Erickson, Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development, esp. 40-46, 73-82.

[21] UAVs would likely be too easily detected to be reliable in this role. To obtain the information they need, they must transmit with active radar. Discussion with technical expert, 15 January 2017.

[22] Lt. Bin-Yi Liu, Republic of China Navy, “HF Over-The-Horizon Radar System Performance Analysis,” Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, September 2007, 21.

[23] Henry Kenhmann, “Exclusif: La Chine Construit Son 2ème Radar Trans-Horizon Pour Surveiller Le Japon Et La Corée” [Exclusive: China Builds Its Second Trans-Horizon Radar to Monitor Japan and Korea], Eastern Pendulum, 18 January 2017, http://www.eastpendulum.com/exclusif-la-chine-construit-2eme-radar-trans-horizon-surveiller-japon-coree.

[24] A Chinese OTH-B radar facing the South China Sea would have to be set back some distance to mitigate the effects of coastal mountains blocking its line of sight. Author’s discussion with Sean O’Conner, Principal Imagery Analyst, Aerospace, Defense & Security, IHS Jane’s, 9 February 2017.

[25] Australia’s Jindalee system, for instance, has a range of at least 3,000 km. “Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN),” Jane’s C4ISR & Mission Systems: Land, 21 September 2016. As with other OTH-B systems, Jindalee’s detection range reportedly improves with conditions in the ionosphere that correspond to daytime and periods without elevated solar activity. Bradley Perrett, “Long View: The Jindalee Over-the-Horizon Radars Are Substantially Improved,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 22 September 2014, 43-45. During World War II, HF radio “bounces,” and corresponding range, varied considerably with environmental conditions.

[26] Kevin Pollpeter et al., China Dream, Space Dream: China’s Progress in Space Technologies and Implications of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission, 2 March 2015), http://www.uscc.gov/Research/china-dream-space-dream-chinas- progress-space-technologies-and-implications-united-states.

[27] Michael S. Chase and Jeffrey Engstrom, “China’s Military Reforms: An Optimistic Take,” Joint Force Quarterly 83.4 (October 2016): 49-52, http://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-83/Article/969661/chinas-military-reforms-an-optimistic-take/.

[28] “Beidou/Compass Series,” Jane’s Space Systems and Industry, 5 July 2016, www.janes.com.

[29] “Yaogan Series,” Jane’s Space Systems and Industry, 3 June 2016, www.janes.com.

[30] Ibid.

[31] “NOSS (White Cloud),” Jane’s Space Systems and Industry, 26 March 2016. EO satellites are dependent on daylight. If could afford to launch a sufficient number of missiles, however, it might be able to “clarify with ordnance” by shooting at all targets of interest.

[32] Satellite updates obtained from “Live Real Time Satellite Tracking and Predictions,” https://www.n2yo.com.

[33] Rui C. Barbosa, “Long March 4C Apparently Fails During Gaofen-10 Launch,” NASA SpaceFlight, 1 September 2016, https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/09/long-march-4c-apparently-fails-during-gaofen-10-launch/.

[34] “Gaofen Series,” Jane’s Space Systems and Industry, 29 September 2016, www.janes.com.

[35] “China Launches Four More Satellites,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, 9 October 2015, www.janes.com.

[36] Rui C. Barbosa, “China Launches Jilin-1 Mission via Long March 2D,” NASA SpaceFlight, 7 October 2015, https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/10/china-launches-jilin-1-mission-long-march-2d/. See also Chen Na, “Jilin-1: China’s First Commercial Remote Sensing Satellites Aim to Fill the Void,” Chinese Academy of Sciences, 13 May 2016, http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201605/t20160513_163009.shtml.

[37] “2016 Space Launch Statistics,” Spaceflight 101, 31 December 2016, http://spaceflight101.com/2016-space-launch-statistics/.

[38] Lt. Bin-Yi Liu, Republic of China Navy, “HF Over-The-Horizon Radar System Performance Analysis,” Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, September 2007, 20, 22.

[39] “Another Piece of the Puzzle,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 22 February 2016, https://amti.csis.org/another-piece-of-the-puzzle/.

[40] Steve Mollman, “The ‘Strategic Triangle’ That Would Allow Beijing to Control the South China Sea,” Quartz, 11 September 2016, https://qz.com/775382/all-eyes-are-on-the-scarborough-shoal-the-reef-rimmed-lagoon-that-would-allow-beijing-to-control-the-south-china-sea/; Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “Chinese Scarborough Shoal Base Would Threaten Manila,” Breaking Defense, 28 April 2016, http://breakingdefense.com/2016/04/chinese-scarborough-shoal-base-would-threaten-manila/.

[41] “Challenges…Antiship Ballistic Missiles,” World Maritime Challenges (Suitland, MD: Office of

Naval Intelligence, 2004), 22.

[42] Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 17 June 2016), 67, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf.

[43] Greg Chaffin, “Building an Active, Layered Defense: Chinese Naval and Air Force Advancement—An Interview with Andrew S. Erickson,” Policy Q&A, National Bureau of Asian Research, 10 September 2012, http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=272.

[44] For detailed conceptual analysis, see Garth Hekler, “Chinese Early-Warning Aircraft, Electronic Warfare, and Maritime C4ISR,” Andrew S. Erickson and Lyle J. Goldstein, eds., Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), 130-50.

[45] Robert G. Angevine, “Hiding in Plain Sight: The U.S. Navy and Dispersed Operations under EMCON, 1956–1972,” Naval War College Review 64.2 (Spring 2011): 79-95, https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/bfd7502d-682c-444d-946c-63245227ae68/Hiding-in-Plain-Sight–The-U-S–Navy-and-Dispersed; “EMCON Effectiveness Study 1975,” Naval Weapons Center, U.S. Navy; Naval War College Archives Record Group 4, Box 291, File 18, declassified by authority of General Declassification Schedule of Executive Order 12958 dated 17 April 1995.

[46] “China May Build Base at Scarborough Shoal,” Maritime Executive, 10 February 2017, http://maritime-executive.com/article/china-may-build-base-at-scarborough-shoal.

[47] Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Naval Shipbuilding Sets Sail,” The National Interest, 8 February 2017, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/chinas-naval-shipbuilding-sets-sail-19371; Andrew S. Erickson, ed., Chinese Naval Shipbuilding: An Ambitious and Uncertain Course (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2016).

[48] DoD (2016), 29.

[49] U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), “PLA Navy Orders of Battle 2000-2020,” written response to request for information provided to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Suitland, MD, 24 June 2013; op. cit. Craig Murray, Andrew Berglund, and Kimberly Hsu, “China’s Naval Modernization and Implications for the United States,” U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Research Backgrounder, 26 August 2013, http://origin.www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/ Research/Backgrounder_China’s%20Naval%20Modernization%20and%20Implications%20for%20the%20United%20States.pdf.

 

DETAILS REGARDING THE HEARING:

HEARING ON CHINA’S ADVANCED WEAPONS

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 419

Washington, DC

Hearing Co-Chairs: Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew and Senator James Talent

9:35 AM – 11:05 AM:         Panel I: China’s Hypersonic and Maneuverable Re-Entry Vehicle Programs

11:05 AM – 11:15 AM:       Break

11:15 AM – 12:45 PM:        Panel II: China’s Directed Energy and Electromagnetic Weapons Programs

12:45 PM – 1:45 PM:          Lunch Break

1:45 PM – 3:15 PM:            Panel III: China’s Counterspace, Unmanned, and Artificial Intelligence Weapons Programs

3:15 PM – 3:20 PM:            Closing Remarks

3:20 PM:                              Adjourn

***

Andrew S. Erickson, Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implications (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation/Brookings Institution Press, 2013).

Now available via Amazon, including as a Kindle eBook!

Click here to purchase this book via Brookings Institution Press or from the Jamestown Store.

China’s anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), the DF-21D, has reached the equivalent of Initial Operational Capability. While perfecting the system-of-systems to maximize its effectiveness remains a work in progress, it has been deployed in small numbers. This 160-page book examines the ASBM’s capability and history, showing how the DF-21D meets multiple priorities in Chinese defense modernization and in the national security bureaucracy as well its implications for the United States. The ASBM’s physical threat to U.S. Navy ships will be determined by the development of associated systems and organizations, which currently limit data fusion and coordination in the complex task of identifying a U.S. aircraft carrier in the open ocean. Still, the ASBM poses a direct threat to the foundations of U.S. power projection in Asia and will undermine the U.S. position, unless efforts to counter its political-military effects are taken continually.

Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development_Drivers, Trajectories and Strategic Implications

OVERVIEW

In 2015, the largest military parade in Chinese history displayed nearly a dozen operational ballistic missiles, including sixteen trucks carrying the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), the Dong Feng-21D. Official commentary dubbed it “the assassin’s mace for maritime asymmetric warfare.” China’s most advanced ASBM has a range of 1,500 km and a maneuverable warhead, giving the DF-21D the ability to hit ships far out into the Pacific.

Since 2010, China has deployed the world’s first system capable of targeting a moving aircraft carrier group with long-range, land-based mobile launchers. How did Beijing get there first? This book tells the story for the first time. Drawing on a wide range of authoritative Chinese-language sources from doctrinal materials to technical papers, it traces in detail the motivations, genesis, programmatic history, and implications of Chinese ASBM development.

Chinese strategic thinkers have long sought to exploit their nation’s continental depth to project power beyond its once-frequently-invaded shores, an approach termed “using the land to control the sea.” Inspired in part by U.S. development of the Pershing II theater ballistic missile and China’s own decades of investment in ballistic missiles, in the 1970s this strand of strategic thought began to converge in research toward an ASBM.

It would take a series of threatening events in the 1990s, however, to persuade Chinese leaders to fund concerted ASBM development as a dedicated megaproject. In May 1999, in the aftermath of the accidental NATO bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade, Chinese President Jiang Zemin directed the defense industry to rapidly develop “assassin’s mace” weapons, declaring, “That which the enemy fears most, that is what we must develop.”

For over fifteen years the U.S. military has been taking China’s ASBM potential seriously and developing countermeasures. Despite rapid ongoing progress, China’s reconnaissance-strike complex, the vast network of sensors and data processing necessary to attack a distant moving target, continues to exhibit significant limitations. However, the missiles themselves work and China has clearly fielded purpose-designed ASBMs of some potential capability. Their parade appearance suggests that Beijing considers them to be minimally operational and capable of achieving a measure of deterrence.

As peacetime conditions and weapons systems’ growing complexity render the line between ongoing development and operational capability ever blurrier and more uncertain in actual employment, this book offers a study in using available information to understand the broad outlines of one of the world’s great technological endeavors—and its meaning in China, and beyond. In addition to its compelling strategic history, it offers a model for conducting and evaluating Chinese-language open source research concerning Beijing’s many military megaprojects to come.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Executive Summary 1
II. Key Judgments 4
III. Current Status of the DF-21D ASBM 10
IV. Background and Motivations for the ASBM Program 27
V. Discussions of ASBMs in the Chinese Literature 52
VI. Constructing a System of Systems 81
VII. Conclusion 116
VIII. Appendix A: Knowledge Gaps and Key Questions 133
IX. Appendix B: Post-1996 ASBM Publication Boom 139
X. Appendix C: Chinese Analysis of the Pershing II 142
About the Author 147
Acknowledgments 148

LIST OF FIGURES

Table 1: Potential Indicators of Chinese ASBM Innovation……..26
Table 2: Chinese ASBM Development Timeline………………….41
Table 3: Principal Chinese Generalist Publications Surveyed…..55
Figure 1: ABSM Publications by Year, 1996–2009………………74
Table 4: Yaogan Satellites Launched to Date…………………93
Table 5: Beidou Satellites Launched to Date…………………99

EPIGRAPHS

“We are continentalists. Now guided missiles are well developed. Installed on shore, they can hit any target, and there is no need to build a big navy.”

—Vice Premier Zhang Chunqiao addressing the Central Military Commission (1972)

“Whatever the enemy fears most, that is what we should develop.”

—President Jiang Zemin as quoted by General Zhang Wannian (1999)

“When many carrier-borne aircraft are used in continuous air strikes against our coast, in order to halt the powerful air raids, the enemy’s core carrier should be struck as with a ‘heavy hammer’.”

Science of Second Artillery Campaigns (2004)

“Since the introduction of nuclear weapons, all the major nuclear powers have developed ballistic missile warning systems against possible nuclear attacks, and there has not been a single precedent of a major nuclear power attacking another with ballistic missiles.”

—Huo Fei and Luo Shiwei, Modern Ships (2008)

“The queen of the American fleet, and the centerpiece of the most powerful Navy the world has ever seen, the aircraft carrier, is in danger of becoming like the battleships it was originally designed to support: big, expensive, vulnerable—and surprisingly irrelevant to the conflicts of the time.”

—Captain Henry J. Hendrix, U.S. Navy (2013)

REVIEWS

“I purchased this important book some years ago. It provides substantial insight to the development of the Dong-Feng (DF-21D) Chinese 東風 ‘East Wind’ (anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) and its current Initial Operational Capability. It is a must read for all naval strategists.”

Capt. D. L. Hayward, “I Purchased This Important Book…,” 5-Star Review, Amazon.com, 8 February 2017.

“Very insightful and easy read.”

Carl O Schuster, “Five Stars,” 5-Star Review, Amazon.com, 11 February 2015.

“Andrew S. Erickson is a leading authority on Chinese naval developments. His research and linguistic abilities are matched by his careful, systematic analysis. In this work Erickson thoroughly surveys the existing literature in English and Chinese addressing Beijing’s efforts to deploy antiship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) able to strike large warships at ranges of more than a thousand miles …a thoughtful evaluation of current Chinese efforts to defend the homeland and exert control over the waters Beijing believes vital to national-security interests. Also impressive is Erickson’s appreciation of the possibility of “deeply destabilizing” strategic effects of successful Chinese maritime control strategies on the Asian political situation—that is, a successful ASBM will not simply be a tactical weapon. This is a book that every naval officer and civilian analyst must read.”

Prof. Bernard D. Cole, Ph.D., National Defense University, review in Naval War College Review 67.2 (Spring 2014): 134-35.

“Andrew Erickson offers a thoughtful counterbalance to the official dogma that we have a technological lead sufficient to ensure that our aircraft carriers remain relevant even against the broad and deep efforts of other nations to render them quite vulnerable. If we don’t seek and incorporate disconfirming advice such as his into our assessments, we may have a strategic surprise which clarifies the situation – but on terms unhelpful to us and our allies.”

Greg LeGore, “Uses Original Sources to Offset Our Smug Over-Confidence,” 5 Star Rating, Amazon.com, 30 March 2014.

SAMPLE CONTENT

Executive Summary:

China’s DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is no longer an aspiration. Beijing has successfully developed, tested and deployed the world’s first weapons system capable of targeting a moving aircraft carrier strike group (CSG) from long-range, land-based mobile launchers. The Second Artillery, China’s strategic missile force, already has a capability to attempt to use the DF-21D against U.S. CSGs in the event of conflict, and therefore likely expects to achieve a growing degree of deterrence with it.

None of this should be surprising. Numerous ASBM data points have been emerging from Chinese sources as well as U.S. official statements and reports for years now, available to anyone willing to connect them. They offer a useful case study not only to those involved with Sino-U.S. strategic relations, but also to anyone conducting analysis under conditions of incomplete information.

The real surprise is how much “ASBM denial” there has been outside active governmental circles. Some individuals, including a few respected professionals with the highest levels of Cold War experience, assumed that any Chinese ASBM would have many of the shortcomings of failed Soviet Industrial-age design but would nevertheless be susceptible to U.S. Information-age ballistic missile defense systems. Other skeptics stated that a conventional ASBM was technologically unfeasible; still more said that there was no evidence that China could achieve such a capability. Physics, however, allows for an ASBM; physics is the same for the Chinese as it is for everyone else. China has many physics experts and engineers who have served their country. We are witnessing the results today as well as the ability of China’s once-moribund defense industry to integrate existing technologies in innovative ways.

It may seem a cliché to cite Sun Zi’s maxim that “in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.” This universally-accepted approach, however, does seem to correspond to China’s military planning, particularly such developments as its ASBM program—one of several weapons designed to exploit relative Chinese military strengths against relative U.S. military weaknesses. An ASBM system of systems, if developed and deployed successfully, would be the world’s first weapons system capable of targeting a moving CSG from long-range, land-based mobile launchers.

This could pose a new type of threat to the U.S. Navy. For the past several decades, the U.S. Navy has used aircraft carriers to project power around the world, including in and around the Taiwan Strait. Since the 1920s, the U.S. Navy has built its carrier forces around the idea that the air group represents the first and best line of defense for the carrier. The ASBM potentially bypasses the air group and removes it from the defensive equation. Only one other major system has ever offered the possibility of doing this: the submarine. While China is developing a potent fleet, it cannot today effectively conduct advanced anti-submarine warfare (ASW), while the U.S. can—using carrier-based aircraft. Defense against missiles, by contrast, is potentially an extremely difficult problem for any military.

China is developing increasingly formidable naval platforms, aircraft and missiles that could hold U.S. Navy platforms and their supporting assets at risk in the Western Pacific. Central to maximizing Chinese ability to employ these systems—and hence to consolidating China’s emerging aerospace combat capabilities over the Near Seas (the Yellow, East China and South China Seas)—are its emerging command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities. These systems will enable the Chinese military to strengthen cueing, reconnaissance, communications and data relay for maritime monitoring and targeting as well as for the coordination of Chinese platforms, systems and personnel engaged in these roles. Particularly important will be effective use of ISR, the collection and processing of information concerning potential military targets and the transmission of that information to both those who would make relevant decisions and those who would actually launch the ASBM.

The successful achievement of high-quality, real-time satellite imagery and target-locating data and fusion as well as reliable indigenous satellite navigation and positioning would facilitate holding enemy vessels at risk via devastating multi-axis strikes. As Chinese planners conceive of them, these strikes would involve precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles launched from a variety of land-, sea-, undersea- and air-based platforms in coordinated sequence. Emerging space-based C4ISR capabilities, therefore, could increase greatly China’s capacity to use military means to assert its interests along the contested Near Seas. Beijing has a clear strategic rationale for mastering the relevant components, particularly for what it calls “active defense” and “counter-intervention” operations, and the U.S. terms “anti-access/area denial” (A2/AD) operations, in and around the Near Seas. Doing so could finally enable the PLA to translate its traditional approach of “achieving military superiority in a specific time and area even in a context of overall inferiority” into the maritime dimension.

The bottom line is that the era of “ASBM denial” is over. China’s ASBM is not science fiction. It is not a “smoke and mirrors” bluff. The DF-21D is not an aspirational capability that the United States can afford to ignore until some point in the future.

Key Judgments:

  • The DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) has reached the equivalent of Initial Operational Capability.

The era of ASBM denial is over: China’s DF-21D exists and has been deployed in small numbers. Additional challenges and tests remain before the DF-21D reaches its full potential; however, senior U.S. and Taiwan officials in the last two years have confirmed separately that the ASBM is in the field. Additionally, the basic support infrastructure is already sufficient to provide basic targeting capabilities against U.S. aircraft carriers operating in the Western Pacific (if countermeasures are not considered).

  • Analysts will not be able to identify a sharp red line between Initial Operational Capability and the full operational potential of the DF-21D.

The ASBM’s physical threat to U.S. Navy ships will be determined by the development of associated information processing systems and capabilities. This is part of a larger analytical challenge in which Chinese “hardware” continues to improve dramatically, but the caliber of the “software” supporting and connecting it remains uncertain and untested in war. The missile components of the DF-21D already are proven through multiple tests, but China’s ability use the missile against a moving target operating in the open ocean remains unproven. The supporting command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) technologies probably still lag behind the requirement to identify and track a U.S. aircraft carrier in real time under wartime conditions. Improving C4ISR capabilities, however, is a high priority in China’s military modernization program. U.S. countermeasures are another matter entirely: there is every reason to believe that they are already formidable.

  • Beijing is developing and deploying ASBMs as part of a far broader effort to assert influence over its still-contested Near Seas island and maritime claims.

The DF-21D targets specific physics-based limitations in U.S. and allied military platforms, adding to China’s growing complement of submarines, other ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and electronic warfare tools to restrict an adversary’s ability to operate on China’s periphery. The missile stands out from the already-potent anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) effort—what the Chinese call “counter-intervention”—because it draws on over half a century of Chinese experience with ballistic missiles, may be fired from mobile, highly concealable platforms and has the range to strike targets hundreds of kilometers from China’s shores.

  • The 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crises drove the development of the ASBM program; however, it is a program with long historical roots.

Chinese ASBM development dates at least to the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crises, which underscored Chinese feelings of helplessness against U.S. naval power. Broad-based Chinese ASBM development effort since then suggests China will continue to make progress with the missile and its supporting infrastructure. Chinese leaders and strategists have been thinking of using land-based missiles to hit threatening targets at sea for over three decades. Beginning in the late 1970s, Chinese experts studied the U.S. Pershing II theater ballistic missile fitted with maneuvering reentry vehicles (MaRV), and appear to have incorporated, or at least emulated, some of its key technologies. China’s space program has furthered overall capabilities that are useful to its ASBM program, including the missile’s supporting architecture.

  • The ASBM is an organic extension of, and an innovation involving, existing Chinese technologies.

The DF-21D is not a novel idea or technology, but rather what Tai Ming Cheung terms an “architectural innovation,” involving a novel assembly of existing systems to yield a new use with unprecedented maneuverability and accuracy. The U.S. and Russia could have developed an ASBM before China, but remain proscribed from doing so to this day by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty they signed in 1987, at which time they lacked the need for such a weapon. Still, military capabilities are determined by effectiveness with respect to objectives, not technical sophistication for its own sake. China’s ASBM ‘Frankenweapon’ is an exemplar of the kind of innovation that is potentially unpredictable and disruptive, especially as China’s defense industry becomes more capable of meeting the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s needs across a variety of technical fields.

  • Open source discussions have consistently provided important insights into the ASBM program throughout its life cycle, including its technical challenges, potential integration into war fighting and operational scenarios.

Despite the sensitivity of China’s ASBM program—which has only recently been explicitly acknowledged by Chinese officials—and the resulting gaps in publicly-available information, open sources have provided clues to Chinese intentions throughout the lifespan of the ASBM program. As the PLA has modernized its technology and doctrine, these changes spurred an outpouring of professional, technical, and generalist publications to debate and critique how the PLA should fight and with what equipment. The ASBM was no different, except during a two-year period (2004–06) when related publication dipped dramatically in a classic ‘bathtub’-shaped pattern. Chinese engineers were probably testing specific aspects of the ASBM then, heightening its sensitivity.

  • As the ASBM becomes more effective operationally, the capability may reinforce China’s land-centric approach to defense.

The idea of developing ASBMs clearly appeals to the interests of many institutions—including the Second Artillery—and its deployment may reinforce visible strands of PLA thinking, including the following: reinforcement of continental approaches to maritime security (“using the land to control the sea”); consolidation of centralized approaches to command; further emphasis on multi-axis saturation attacks (e.g. combining ASBMs and anti-ship cruise missiles); and greater confidence in China’s ability to threaten and discourage U.S. Navy operations and to control escalation without matching U.S. capabilities at sea. To further its Near Seas interests, China’s focus on developing an “Anti-Navy” based on such A2/AD weapons as ASBMs is a far more efficient approach than pursuing a blue water navy. Here, China’s institutional predilections serve it well, and permit it to challenge U.S. forces severely, even as it spends far less on its military than does the U.S.

  • The DF-21D probably requires additional testing before Chinese leaders can be confident of its effectiveness under wartime conditions.

China must have conducted a rigorous program of tests sufficient to demonstrate that the DF-21D ASBM is mature enough for initial production, deployment, and employment. This likely would have entailed a variety of flight tests, albeit not yet fully integrated over water—perhaps because of a desire to avoid embarrassing failures in view of worried citizens of East Asia and a U.S. military increasingly refocused on the region.

  • Bureaucratic and technical pitfalls related to data fusion, coordination and “jointness” may limit the DF-21D’s utility.

Progress aside, however, Chinese ASBM development nevertheless faces manifold challenges that may limit the missile’s tactical and strategic effectiveness. Data fusion, bureaucratic coordination and “jointness” remain key limitations. A variety of organizations across the PLA, including the three services and one branch, as well as the General Staff Department control, task and exploit the sensors used the generate the ASBM’s targeting information.  How this information is integrated, including how different sensors are used to compensate for shortfalls in real time, remains both a concern for the PLA and a gap in the literature.

  • The ASBM poses a direct threat to the foundations of U.S. power projection in the Asia-Pacific, potentially undermining U.S. influence there.

While U.S. airbases around China already are vulnerable to Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles, the ASBM targets the last relatively uncontested airfield without requiring China to develop the naval resources necessary to challenge the U.S. Navy directly at sea. For the first time since the 1920s, the United States faces a direct threat to the platform that has represented the core of its naval power projection: the aircraft carrier strike group. U.S. policymakers must face the possibility that Beijing might decide to use ASBMs in the event of conflict, and that the PLA might be able to strike and disable one or more aircraft carriers if countermeasures proved inadequate.

  • Beijing may be seeking to leverage the ASBM capability for strategic communication about deterrence and the reliability of S. assistance.

Beijing is most likely using the existence and deployment of the ASBM to shape foreign perceptions of conflict scenarios involving China. By developing such abilities to hold U.S. and allied military platforms at risk, Beijing hopes to deter them from intervening in areas of sensitivity to China in the first place, and to persuade Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and other regional actors that U.S. assistance will be neither dependable nor forthcoming. The significant and growing amount of Chinese ASBM literature appears to be part of a larger pattern in which Beijing is becoming increasingly “translucent” (if still not fully transparent) regarding selected capabilities in order to enhance deterrence.

  • The United States will need measures to reassure allies and to deter China in order to control the political-military effects of a working ASBM.

Washington has two basic strategic options for managing the political-military consequences of a deployed weapon capable of threatening the foundations of U.S. power projection in East Asia: one, offering calibrated transparency about countermeasures that reassures allies that U.S. aircraft carriers can operate successfully within the range of the DF-21D while retaining the value of the countermeasures; and, two, shifting combat power to undersea and advanced long-range aerial vehicles that present less of a target to Chinese missiles.

The U.S. already enjoys proven undersea preponderance. While nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are not directly relevant to the regional balance of power given their deterrence mission, which is not geographically-specific, it would be a grave error to allow numbers or deployments of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) or the equivalent capabilities of nuclear-powered guided missile submarines (SSGNs) to erode. Doing so while pursuing Asia-Pacific rebalancing would create the worst of both worlds, in which China’s leaders feel targeted by rebalancing, but are emboldened by its hollowness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He helped to establish CMSI and to stand it up officially in 2006, and has subsequently played an integral role in its development. Erickson currently serves on the Naval War College Review’s Editorial Board. Since 2008 he has been an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Erickson is also an expert contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report (中国实时报). Erickson is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2012, the National Bureau of Asian Research awarded him the inaugural Ellis Joffe Prize for PLA Studies. During academic year 2010-11, Erickson was a Fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program in residence at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies. From 2008-11, he was a Fellow in the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program, and served as a scholar escort on a five-Member Congressional trip to China. In 2014, Erickson helped to escort the Commander of China’s Navy and his delegation on a visit to Harvard. He subsequently helped to establish, and to escort the first iteration of, NWC’s first bilateral naval officer exchange program with China, which he continues to support. Erickson has taught courses at NWC and Yonsei University. He advises a wide range of student research and theses at NWC, Harvard, and other institutions; and provides curricular inputs to NWC and other schools. In 2013, while deployed in the Pacific as a Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard USS Nimitz, he delivered twenty-five hours of presentations. Erickson has briefed the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, his Executive Panel, the Secretary of the Navy, and U.S. naval leadership throughout the Asia-Pacific; as well as the Deputy Secretary of Defense, other Executive Branch officials, and multiple Members of Congress. He has testified before the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees. Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University. He blogs at www.andrewerickson.com and www.chinasignpost.com.

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author and in no way represent the policies or estimates of the U.S. Navy or any other organization of the U.S. government.

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Jordan Wilson, China’s Expanding Ability to Conduct Conventional Missile Strikes on Guam (Washington, DC: U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 10 May 2016).

Executive Summary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) perceives that its legitimacy in the eyes of China’s citizens is based, in part, on its ability to demonstrate that it is capable of strengthening the nation and safeguarding China’s territorial interests and claims. Yet the CCP leadership believes the United States’ presence in the Asia Pacific could interfere with its ability to defend these interests and claims if a regional crisis were to arise. This concern has prompted Beijing to develop conventional missile capabilities to target U.S. military facilities in the Asia Pacific in general, and Guam in particular, in order to expand China’s options and improve its capacity to deter or deny U.S. intervention during such a crisis.

Several new conventional platforms and weapons systems developed by China in recent years have increased its ability to hold U.S. forces stationed on Guam at risk in a potential conflict. Currently, accuracy limitations and platform vulnerabilities render this risk relatively low, but China’s commitment to continuing to modernize its strike capabilities indicates the risk will likely grow going forward. The current array of Chinese conventional missiles able to reach Guam includes: 1) the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), not yet a precision strike weapon but potentially of concern in large numbers; 2) the DF-26 antiship ballistic missile (ASBM), unproven against a moving target at sea but undergoing further development; 3) air-launched land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs), launched from bombers with a high probability of being detected and intercepted by U.S. aircraft and anti-aircraft systems; 4) air-launched antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs), with the same aircraft limitation; 5) sea-launched ASCMs, of concern should the platforms be able to move into range undetected, a challenge for China’s relatively noisy submarines; and 6) sea-launched LACMs, which China does not currently field but is likely working to develop. To evaluate China’s ability to strike Guam going forward, the areas that should be monitored most closely are increased deployments of DF-26 missiles and qualitative improvements to China’s precision strike capabilities, bomber fleet, in-air refueling capability, and submarine quieting technology.

Guam, a territory of the United States, is growing in importance to U.S. strategic interests and any potential warfighting operations in the Asia Pacific, even as China’s ability to strike the island is increasing. Such attacks could hold key U.S. assets stationed on Guam at risk and also disrupt their region-wide response effort, slowing deployment timetables and reducing the effectiveness of U.S. forces in the theater. China’s leaders could also be more willing to resort to military force in an existing crisis if they believed they could successfully hold Guam at risk, diminishing the United States’ ability to deter an escalation, although it is difficult to determine the extent to which better operational capabilities influence strategic thinking in Beijing. Options such as hardening facilities on Guam, further dispersing U.S. regional military facilities, continuing investments in “next-generation” missile defense capabilities, revisiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty, and maintaining superiority in regional strike capabilities offer potential avenues for addressing these key security concerns. …

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Andrew S. Erickson, “Raining Down: Assessing the Emergent ASBM Threat,” Jane’s Navy International, 16 March 2016.

Contents

The anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) has been portrayed as a game-changing weapon that threatens the dominance of the carrier strike group (CSG). Andrew Erickson examines emerging ASBM capabilities, assesses their potential operational effectiveness, and considers the technological and tactical means to counter them

China’s development and deployment in small numbers of two dedicated operational anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) types – the DF-21D (CSS-5) and DF-26 – has attracted much attention in recent years. While some limitations in China’s reconnaissance/strike complex, along with evolving US and allied countermeasures, continue to render their operational effectiveness uncertain, they are clearly purpose-designed ASBMs of some potential capability.

China is not the first nation to invest in ASBM development. In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union attempted to develop the world’s first ASBM, the R-27K (SS-NX-13), to be launched from a modified Project 629 ‘Golf’-class submarine.

Despite the extensive Soviet constellation of Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites (RORSATs) and Electronic intelligence Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites (EORSATs), however, this nuclear-armed system suffered severe target location problems, had a 370 m circular error probability (CEP), and never became operational. In rare Western coverage of the subject, the noted analyst Norman Polmar said Moscow cancelled the weapon system because of its implications for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), but this was likely making virtue of necessity.

While this example reflects the difficulties in developing an operational ASBM, it also indicates industrial-age limitations concerning vacuum tube and early transistor technology. China has mastered ballistic missile technology and enjoys better satellite capabilities in today’s information age than the Soviet Union had then.

China’s extensive ASBM-related literature does not devote significant attention to Soviet efforts or suggest it played a role in inspiring later Chinese developments – an unusual instance in which Chinese analysts do not regard Russia as a model for weapons development. Rather, it was US development and deployment of the Pershing II theatre ballistic missile fitted with manoeuvring reentry vehicles (MaRVs) that helped inspire – and quite possibly furnished vital technology for – Chinese ASBM development.

Deployed in 1983, the Pershing II was the first ballistic missile to be equipped with terminal guidance technology, including adjustable control fins for terminal manoeuvre on its re-entry vehicle (RV), thereby improving CEP to about 37 m. Beginning as early as 1976, Chinese experts studied the Pershing II extensively, and appear to have emulated – and perhaps directly incorporated – some of its key technologies. Dozens of Chinese articles covered the Pershing II, gradually shifting from basic overviews and translations of foreign media reports to detailed programme analyses and, finally, technical research by identified experts from Chinese government academies, with apparent application to China’s own programmes.

Some Chinese sources state explicitly that the Pershing II programme inspired Chinese research and development relevant to an ASBM – and even served as a prototype of sorts, with the DF-15/CSS-6 based directly on the Pershing II. While some DF-15 versions lack RVs with control fins, at least one has an RV virtually identical to the Pershing II’s. …

RELATED ANALYSIS:

2015 MILITARY PARADE:

Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s DF-21D Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM)—Officially Revealed at 3 September Parade—Complete Open Source Research Compendium,”China Analysis from Original Sources 以第一手资料研究中国 10 September 2015.

Andrew S. Erickson, “Showtime: China Reveals Two ‘Carrier-Killer’ Missiles,” The National Interest, 3 September 2015.

Andrew S. Erickson, “Missile March: China Parade Projects Patriotism at Home, Aims for Awe Abroad,” China Real Time Report (中国实时报), Wall Street Journal, 3 September 2015.

ANTI-SHIP BALLISTIC MISSILES (ASBMS), DF-21D AND ANTI-SHIP VARIANT OF DF-26:

Andrew S. Erickson, “Academy of Military Science Researchers: ‘Why We Had to Develop the Dongfeng-26 Ballistic Missile’—Bilingual Text, Analysis & Related Links,” China Analysis from Original Sources 以第一手料研究中国, 5 December 2015.

Andrew S. Erickson, “How China Got There First: Beijing’s Unique Path to ASBM Development and Deployment,” Jamestown Foundation China Brief 13.12 (7 June 2013).

Andrew S. Erickson, “China Channels Billy Mitchell: Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Alters Region’s Military Geography,” Jamestown Foundation China Brief 13.5 (4 March 2013).

Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins, “China Deploys World’s First Long-Range, Land-Based ‘Carrier Killer’: DF-21D Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Reaches ‘Initial Operational Capability’ (IOC),” China SignPost™ (洞察中国), No. 14 (26 December 2010).

Andrew S. Erickson, “Take China’s ASBM Potential Seriously,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 136.2 (February 2010): 8.

Andrew S. Erickson, “Ballistic Trajectory—China Develops New Anti-Ship Missile,” China Watch, Jane’s Intelligence Review 22 (4 January 2010): 2-4.

Andrew S. Erickson and David D. Yang, “Using the Land to Control the Sea? Chinese Analysts Consider the Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile,” Naval War College Review 62.4 (Autumn 2009): 53-86.

Andrew S. Erickson, “Chinese ASBM Development: Knowns and Unknowns,” Jamestown China Brief 9.13 (24 June 2009): 4-8.

Andrew S. Erickson and David Yang, “On the Verge of a Game-Changer,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 135.3 (May 2009): 26-32.

Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Reaches Equivalent of ‘Initial Operational Capability’ (IOC)—Where It’s Going and What it Means,” China Analysis from Original Sources 以第一手资料研究中国, 12 July 2011.

Andrew S. Erickson, “China Testing Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM); U.S. Preparing Accordingly–Now Updated With Additional Sources,” China Analysis from Original Sources 以第一手资料研究中国, 25 December 2010. 

Andrew S. Erickson, A Statement Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “PLA Modernization in Traditional Warfare Capabilities” panel, “China’s Military Modernization and its Impact on the United States and the Asia-Pacific” hearing, Washington, DC, 29 March 2007, 72-78; published in 2007 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 110th Congress, 1st Session, November 2007, 91.

OTHER BALLISTIC MISSILES:

Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Space Development History: A Comparison of the Rocket and Satellite Sectors,” Acta Astronautica 103 (October/November 2014): 142–67.

Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase, “China’s Strategic Rocket Force: Upgrading Hardware and Software (Part 2 of 2),” Jamestown China Brief 14.14 (17 July 2014).

Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase, “China’s Strategic Rocket Force: Sharpening the Sword (Part 1 of 2),” Jamestown China Brief 14.13 (3 July 2014).

Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase, “China Goes Ballistic,” The National Interest 131 (May-June 2014): 58-64.

Michael S. Chase and Andrew S. Erickson, “A Competitive Strategy with Chinese Characteristics? The Second Artillery’s Growing Conventional Forces and Missions,” in Thomas Mahnken, ed., Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century: Theory, History, and Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 206-18.

Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins, “China’s Ballistic Missiles: A Force to be Reckoned With,” China Real Time Report (中国事实报), Wall Street Journal, 24 August 2012.

Michael S. Chase and Andrew S. Erickson, “The Conventional Missile Capabilities of China’s Second Artillery Force: Cornerstone of Deterrence and Warfighting,” Asian Security, 8.2 (Summer 2012): 115-37.

Christopher T. Yeaw, Andrew S. Erickson, and Michael S. Chase, “The Future of Chinese Nuclear Policy and Strategy,” in Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes, eds., Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age: Power, Ambition, and the Ultimate Weapon (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2012), 53-80.

Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase, “China’s SSBN Force: Transitioning to the Next Generation,” Jamestown China Brief, Vol. 9, No. 12 (10 June 2009).

Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase, “An Undersea Deterrent? China’s Emerging SSBN Force,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 135.4 (June 2009): 36-41.

Michael S. Chase, Andrew S. Erickson, and Christopher T. Yeaw, “The Future of Chinese Deterrence Strategy,” Jamestown China Brief 9.5 (4 March 2009): 6-9.

Michael S. Chase, Andrew S. Erickson, and Christopher Yeaw, “Chinese Theater and Strategic Missile Force Modernization and its Implications for the United States,” Journal of Strategic Studies 32.1 (February 2009): 67-114.