The Chinese military has deployed its new anti-ship ballistic missile along its southern coast facing Taiwan, the Pentagon’s top military intelligence officer said today.
The missile, designated the DF-21D, is one of a “growing number of conventionally armed” new weapons China is deploying to the region, adding to more than 1,200 short-range missiles opposite the island democracy, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, said in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Flynn’s reference to the DF-21D follows one made by U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, in congressional testimony on April 9. He highlighted the “initial deployment of a new anti-ship missile that we believe is designed to target U.S. aircraft carriers.”
Flynn’s brief reference to the DF-21D today is significant because it advances the DIA’s assessment last year, when U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, then the agency’s director, said China’s military is “probably preparing to deploy” the weapon.
The disclosure may spark increased scrutiny in Congress this year about the vulnerability of the Navy’s aircraft carriers, including the new Gerald R. Ford class being built by Newport News, Virginia-based Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.. (HII)
The Navy estimates that the first new carrier will cost at least $12.3 billion, and the service’s budget request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes $1.68 billion for new aircraft carriers, more than double this year’s $781.7 million request. Of that, $945 million would pay for continued design and construction of the second Ford-class carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy.
‘Immediate Need’
Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, warned in his January 2012 annual report that the Navy lacked a target needed to check its defenses against the DF-21D. The Navy had an “immediate need” for a test missile able to replicate the DF-21D’s trajectory, Gilmore said.
Last July, Gilmore told Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in a memo that testing to evaluate the new carriers’ “ability to withstand shock and survive in combat” would be postponed until after the Kennedy is built, and may not be completed for seven years.
The DF-21D is intended to give China “the capability to attack large ships, particularly aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific,” the Pentagon’s 2012 China report said. The report cites estimates that the missile’s range exceeds 930 miles (1,500 kilometers).
Carrier Hunters
The missiles are designed be be launched to a general location, where their guidance systems take over and spot carriers to attack with warheads intended to destroy the ships’ flight decks, launch catapults and control towers.
U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert told defense reporters in March 2012 that the Navy is evaluating how to defeat the missile during all phases of flight, using methods such as jamming the missiles’ sensors, reducing the electronic emissions from U.S. ships, and intercepting the missile.
“Some call that links of a chain,” Greenert said. “You want to break as many links as possible.”
In its fiscal 2014 Budget Highlights book, the Navy said it’s working a “kill chain” against an unspecified weapon.
The Navy, the book says, wants to integrate the capabilities of the Falls Church, Virginia-basedNorthrop Grumman Corp.’s (NOC) E-2D Advanced Hawkeye surveillance aircraft; Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp.’s (LMT) Aegis surveillance and missile defense system; and Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co.’s (RTN) Cooperative Engagement Capability sensor network linking ships and Standard Missile-6 interceptors “to keep pace with the evolving threat.”
Analysts including Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and some naval officers worry that the new carriers, while formidable warships, may not be able to get close enough for their planes to attack enemies, such as China and Iran, that are armed with precision- guided anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington atacapaccio@bloomberg.net
(US Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class James Thierry) Aircraft carriers are the ultimate symbol of American military dominance.
Weighing tens of thousands of tons and costing billions of dollars, these vessels allow the US to project power around the world far from its shores.
But according to a retired US Navy captain, the prime time of aircraft carriers may be coming to an end as strategic mistakes committed by the US over the past 20 years has limited these vessel's capabilities while leaving them open to strikes from new emerging threats.
Retired Navy Capt. Jerry Hendrix, writing in the Center for a New American Security, makes the case that aircraft carriers have steadily lost their utility over the past two decades.
At fault for this are twin mistakes of the US Navy: a steady introduction of aircraft with decreasing flight ranges in addition to a failure to foresee rising military capabilities from countries like China that could target carriers.
"American power and permissive environments were assumed following the end of the Cold War, but the rise of new powers, including China and its pursuit of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies and capabilities to include the carrier-killing 1,000 nautical mile (nm) range Dong Feng-21 anti-ship ballistic missile, now threatens to push the Navy back beyond the range of its carrier air wings," Hendrix notes.
Essentially, any carrier that operates within 1,000 nautical miles of Chinese military placements could be open to a strike from an antiship ballistic missile. This would not be a problem, except that the average unrefueled combat range of US carrier air wings operates at half that distance.
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(Melody Cook/Center for a New American Security)
And even that average combat range is a decrease from the height of the Cold War.
In 1956, for example, air wings had an average range of 1,210 nautical miles on internal fuel alone. This range was achieved even though the US Navy was using an older class of aircraft carriers that could support less aircraft than today's modern carriers.
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(Melody Cook/Center for a New American Security)
The move to shrink the flight range of carrier air wings occurred following the fall of the Soviet Union and the Navy's decision to shift the strategic purpose of carriers away from long-range missions toward acting as platforms for faster and shorter-range sortie missions.
"[P]lanner elected to invest in lower-end conflict scenarios that foresaw carriers operating in the littoral waters nearer their targets," Hendrix wrote. "Emphasis was placed on reliability and sortie generation capabilities. In the language of strategic planners, long range was an area where the Navy and the Department of Defense decided to 'accept risk.'"
These decisions meant that the average unrefueled range of carrier air wings since 1996, at 496 nautical miles, are at their lowest point since the 1930s. In 1930, for instance, the average range was 258 nautical miles. By 1943, this range was extended to 758 nautical miles unrefueled.
And according to Hendrix, the Navy's current procurement strategy does nothing to alleviate the issue.
The decision to follow through with the F-35 only serves as "completing the retreat from range,"according to Hendrix. The F-35 was meant to replace long-range legacy aircraft such as the F-14 and the A-16 — which are no longer in service — but the F-35's initial specs of having a combat range of 730 nautical miles was a 75% decrease in capability from those aircraft.
But in actuality, the F-35C's combat range is expected to be 550 nautical miles, only 50 nautical miles longer than the Navy's current complement of F/A-18E and F Super Hornets.
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(U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Cmdr. Darin Russell/Released)
This lack of range, unless the Navy changes course, will continue to mean that the Navy will have little choice but to continue to operate in waters off potential enemy coasts.
And this means that carriers, for all their cost and high-tech capabilities, would either hypothetically fall within range of Chinese antiship ballistic missiles or would be forced to operate beyond the unrefueled range of their air wings.
"Today’s Navy looks remarkably like it has for the past 70 years, just smaller and more expensive," Hendrix noted in an article for the National Review. "It is an evolutionary force, not a revolutionary force, and it's an easy target for rising powers that seek to overtake it."
A consensus seems to have developed among a large number of defense analysts in recent years arguing that despite the balance of power having shifted in China’s favor, Beijing has no intention to use its military to invade Taiwan and thus resolve the Taiwan “question” once and for all. Doing so…
The National Interest
A consensus seems to have developed among a large number of defense analysts in recent years arguing that despite the balance of power having shifted in China’s favor, Beijing has no intention to use its military toinvade Taiwan and thus resolve the Taiwan “question” once and for all. Doing so would be too costly, some argue, while others contend that Beijing can accomplish unification by creating enough economic dependence and incentives to convince Taiwanese over time of the “inevitability” of a “reunited” China.
The United States successfully tested the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, or BMD, system over the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, simultaneously destroying one ballistic missile target and two cruise missile targets, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, announced in a statement. According to the…
The mechanism can also take down various other small aircraft within a two-kilometer radius within five seconds of locating its target, the China Academy of Engineering Physics, one of the system's co-developers, claimed in a statement Sunday.
"Characterized by its speed, precision and low noise, the system is designed to destroy unmanned, small-scale drones flying within an altitude of 500 m and at a speed below 50 m/s," Xinhua said, citing the statement.
"Intercepting such drones is usually the work of snipers and helicopters, but their success rate is not as high and mistakes with accuracy can result in unwanted damage," said Yi Jinsong, a manager with China Jiuyuan Hi-Tech Equipment Corp., a group under the academy spearheading the project, according to the report.
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A Chinese Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft on the tarmac of Perth International Airport, March 31, …
Yi said these cheap and easy-to-use drones are feasible weapons for terrorists.
Further, drones engaged in unlicensed mapping activities have officials worrying about the effect on military and civil aerial activities.
The new laser system will be installed or transported in vehicles, and "is expected to play a key role in ensuring security during major events in urban areas," the CAEP statement said. It reported the machine had a 100 percent success rate, shooting down more than 30 drones in a recent test.
Xinhua said the academy revealed that it was working on similar laser security systems with greater power and range.
"China typically deploys tight security for domestic political meetings, international conferences and sports events, looking to prevent public protests over issues such as illegal land seizures and corruption as well as any threats to the participants," the Guardian noted.
The US military successfully tracked and brought down a surveillance drone using a similar device in 2012, and laser-based weapons have become a standard line of defense against drones since, the Verge pointed out.
"By training a high-energy beam on the craft for long enough, the weapons are able to burn through the crafts in mid-air, and they are small enough to mount on a truck. The attack requires sustained contact with the target, making it ideal for less maneuverable aircraft like the predator drone, although similar attacks have also been proposed for destroying missiles before they reach their intended target."
After the weapon stopped a barrage of 90 incoming mortars and several drones in mid-flight, defense officials at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command hailed it as a “big step in the development of targeted, high-energy laser beams that might also one day be used to defend USairspace against, for example, fighter-jet or cruise-missile attacks," the Monitor reported.
China has developed a highly accurate laser weapon system that can shoot down light drones at low altitude, state media reported. The machine has a two-kilometre range and can bring down "various small aircraft" within five seconds of locating its target, the official Xinhua news agency said,…
Lockheed wins $1.9 billion deal for U.S. missile-warning satellites
13 hours ago
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A Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II joint strike fighter flies toward its new home at Eglin Air Force …
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force said on Tuesday it had awarded Lockheed Martin Corp a fixed-price contract valued at $1.9 billion to complete work on two missile-warning satellites as part of the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS).
The contract, announced in the Pentagon's daily digest of major contract awards, runs through Sept. 30, 2022.
It funds completion of the fifth and sixth satellites in the SBIRS system, and includes performance incentives and options for acoustic testing, launch operations an early on-orbit testing, the Pentagon said.
U.S. Air Force Space Command's Space and Missile Systems Center said the contract award saved over $1 billion as a result of a block-buy contracting approach and production and management efficiencies.
"We eliminated unnecessary layers of program oversight and contract reporting, restructured our test program and streamlined the production schedules," Colonel Mike Guetlein, production program manager, said in a statement.
The contract comes on top of advanced procurement funding awarded to Lockheed in 2012 and 2013 to start buying parts that take a long time to order. It will also fund completion of the associated ground operations and processing updates.
SBIRS is a new U.S. strategic missile warning system that replaced the 1970s Defense Support Program satellites. It provides continuous early warning of ballistic missile launches and other infrared surveillance to U.S. leaders.
It includes a mix of satellites in geostationary (GEO) orbit, sensors on other satellites in highly elliptical orbit, and ground hardware and software. The first two GEO satellites started operations in 2013. The third GEO satellite is in testing and the fourth is in final assembly, Lockheed said.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Andre Grenon and Stephen Coates)
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. missile defense system managed by Boeing Co on Sunday hit a simulated enemy missile over the Pacific in the first successful intercept test of the program since 2008, the U.S. Defense Department said. The successful intercept will help validate the…
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. missile defense system managed by Boeing Co on Sunday hit a simulated enemy missile over the Pacific in the first successful intercept test of the program since 2008, the U.S. Defense Department said.
The intercept will help validate the troubled Boeing-run Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system which provides the sole U.S. defense against long-range ballistic missiles, and the Raytheon Co kill vehicle that separates from the rocket and hits an incoming warhead.
"This is a very important step in our continuing efforts to improve and increase the reliability of our homeland ballistic missile defense system," said Missile Defense Agency (MDA)Director Vice Admiral James Syring.
He said the agency would continue its ongoing drive to ensure that the ground-based interceptors and overall homeland defense system were effective and dependable.
Reuters reported on Friday that the Pentagon is restructuring its $3.48 billion contract with Boeing for management of the missile defense system to put more emphasis on maintenance and reliability.
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A flight test of the exercising elements of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is launc …
Sunday's high-stakes test came after the system had failed to hit a dummy missile in five of eight previous tests since the Bush administration rushed to deploy the system in 2004 to counter growing threats by North Korea.
Earlier this month, Syring said that another test failure would have forced the Pentagon to reassess its plans to add 14 more interceptors to the 30 already in silos in the ground in Alaska and California.
During the test, a ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, hit a target built by Lockheed Martin Corp that was launched from the U.S. Army's Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, according to the Pentagon and Lockheed.
Lockheed said the unarmed 45-foot (14-meter) target was configured to closely mirror the capabilities of ground-launched missiles that can travel 3,000 km to 5,000 km (1,800 to 3,400 miles).
All components involved in the test appeared to have performed as designed, the Pentagon said. Program officials will spend the next several months assessing the performance of the system using telemetry and other data obtained during the test.
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A Ground-based Interceptor, an element of the overall Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, is laun …
The test marked the first successful intercept by Raytheon's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle Capability Enhancement II, or EKV CE-II, which failed in both previous tests conducted in 2010.
Jim Chilton, vice president of Boeing Strategic Missile & Defense Systems, demonstrated the system’s performance under "an expanded set of conditions that reflect real-world operational requirements." Boeing said the operational complexity of the GMD system was "a major engineering challenge."
Raytheon underscored the importance of testing and said Sunday's successful intercept kept the United States on target to increase its interceptor inventory to 44 from 30 by 2017.
Northrop Grumman Corp integrated data from U.S. missile warning satellites and sea-based radars to help identify, track and destroy the target.
Ten of the interceptors now in place carry the kill vehicle used in Sunday's test. The other 20 carry an earlier kill vehicle that failed in a July 2013 test. Syring has said a fix will be implemented for that issue by year's end.
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A flight test of the exercising elements of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is launc …
Riki Ellison, founder of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, hailed the successful test as a big step forward for the troubled program, and said it would allow U.S. military commanders to reduce the number of interceptors that would be fired at an incoming ballistic missile.
"This success is a significant milestone ... that demonstrates the system's reliability and increases the confidence of the North American Combatant Commander ... responsible for the defense of the country," he said.
Critics said the Raytheon kill vehicle had still only succeeded in one of three tries, and urged Congress to rethink plans to buy 14 more of the flawed interceptors at a cost of $75 million each, or just over $1 billion.
"Would you spend $1 billion on an insurance policy that only worked one third of the time?" said Tom Collina, research director at the Arms Control Association. "We need to put the money into making the system better, not bigger."
Phil Coyle, former Pentagon chief tester and a longtime critic, called for accelerated work on a new design. "We need to make sure we have a system that works, not expand a system we know to be deeply flawed," he said in a statement.
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