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China’s DF-21D and DF-26B ASBMs: Is the U.S. Military Ready?

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发表于 2020-11-16 19:55:21 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
本帖最后由 firebird 于 2020-11-16 19:58 编辑

https://www.realcleardefense.com ... y_ready_649652.html
China’s DF-21D and DF-26B ASBMs: Is the U.S. Military Ready?


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November 16, 2020
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Editor’s Note from Harry Kazianis: Just about a decade ago, I made the tough decision to [size=1em]change careers, going from the telecommunications industry to national security studies. It was not an easy transition, to say the least. However, along the way, I met [size=1em]people who inspired me that I could make such a move and that the work could be truly meaningful considering the changing security environment the United States was facing around 2009 to 2o10.  Through a combination of hard work and luck, I would go on to Harvard and do graduate [size=1em]work on China’s military modernization and efforts to develop anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) weapons platforms inspired by much of the research done at the U.S. Naval War College, where I was a research assistant.
There I met [size=1em]Dr. Andrew Erickson, perhaps the first person to warn of the dangers of China’s ASBM weapons. Considering Beijing’s August DF-21D and DF-26B [size=1em]tests–and the recent revelation such weapons [size=1em]hit an ocean-going vessel–I went back to him to get his reaction. Below is his response to several questions I asked:




With its continued development of ASBMs and associated targeting architecture, [size=1em]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 [size=1em]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, [size=1em]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: “[size=1em]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 [size=1em]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.



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