By Logan Williams, Warrior Editorial Fellow
A week ago, the USS Carl Vinson began to conduct naval exercises with the Philippine Navy. These naval exercises are a part of the trajectory of improving relations and increased closeness between the United States’ and the Phillipines, in the face of the ever-increasing Chinese threat. It was not too long ago that the headlines lauded another harbinger of the great progress between these two nations, in April 2023, when it was announced that the Phillipines had agreed to offer the United States several military bases on their territory.
China, of course, became incensed by the United States’ efforts to protect its friends and partners in the region.
In the geopolitical equivalent of a temper tantrum, the PRC tasked a class-570 frigate named the Huangshan to keep tabs on the United States’ and Phillipines’ Navy vessels, in an attempt to assert its claims within the “South China Sea.” A Global Times report, claimed that the United States’ fears “the Chinese military’s capabilities in targeting large moving warships on its doorstep, which significantly reduces the survivability of aircraft carriers.” The Global Times is a PRC government-owned publication, that is used to present the PRC’s official government positions, and the quoted “capabilities in targeting large moving warships” is a reference to China’s much-touted anti-ship ballistic missile capability.
USS Ford Aircraft Carrier CopyCat
Business Insider reported, on January 5th, 2024, that the PRC had built a massive replica of the United States’ Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers in the desert, to test its anti-ship missiles.
Anti-ship missiles (AShM) have existed for a long time, almost every serious military in the world possesses an anti-ship missile, or another classification of missile that possesses secondary anti-ship capabilities — not just China.
As with all other missiles, AShMs are divided into two categories: cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
Cruise missiles, such as the United States’ infamous Tomahawk missile, are able to strike surface targets within hundreds of miles from the launch point. These missiles are propelled by jet engines throughout the entire course of their flight, and they are guided from the moment of the launch until they strike their target, making them relatively accurate offensive weapons, particularly against moving targets. Cruise missiles fly at subsonic speeds, within the Earth’s atmosphere, and can carry smaller warheads — for example, the U.S.’ Tomahawk missile carries a warhead of approximately 450kg or 1000 lbs. The majority of anti-ship missiles are cruise missiles, many of these anti-ship missiles are of the “sea-skimming” variety, which fly close to the surface of the water to assist in avoiding radar detection.
Ballistic missiles, however, can strike surface targets from thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles from their launch point. These missiles are powered initially by a powerful rocket engine (the boost phase of flight) which carries the missile out of the Earth’s atmosphere before the fuel runs out, and then the missile’s own momentum carries it along a ballistic trajectory (an arc-like flight path) for the free-flight phase, until it re-enters the atmosphere near its target in the terminal phase. The powerful rocket engines of ballistic missiles enable them to reach incredibly high speeds during the boost phase, paired with the drastically reduced air resistance in the vacuum of exoatmospheric, suborbital free-flight, and the assistance of the force of gravity upon re-entry — for example, the United States’ Minuteman Ⅲ reaches a top speed of Mach 23, for context the cutting edge F22-Raptor (one of the fastest fighter jets in the world) reaches a top speed of Mach 2.25. Ballistic missiles can carry much larger warheads than cruise missiles and can often carry multiple warheads. In addition to the damage dealt by a large explosive warhead, the incredible speed of ballistic missiles generates an extreme amount of kinetic energy upon impact, which alone can decimate a target. The major weakness of ballistic missiles is that they fly upon a pre-calculated trajectory, and lack in-flight guidance, and thus, are designed to destroy large and immobile targets – e.g., enemy cities. Anti-ship ballistic missiles are a rare capability, possessed by only four nations.
China’s confidence at sealikely comes from its robust anti-ship ballistic military capability. At present, the United States does not possess an anti-ship ballistic missile although it is developing one, whereas China operates two such missiles — the DF-21 and the newer DF-26.
DF-21 Threat
The DF-21 entered into service in 1991. It has a maximum range of approximately 1400-1700km (around 1000 miles), can carry 600kg warhead (approximately 1300-1400 lbs), and it can travel at maximum speeds of Mach 10. It has a circular error probability of approximately 300 meters. The DF-21 was fitted with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MARV), which allowed slight trajectory changes to be made during the terminal phase of a ballistic missile’s flight, as it approached its target.
DF-26
The DF-26 entered into service in 2015. It has a maximum range of over 3000 miles, it carries a warhead of up to 1800kg (approximately 4,000 lbs), and a maximum speed of Mach 18.
Yet, as impressive as these ASBMs are, they might not pose as much of a threat to the United States’ fleet as China would hope. The United States’ primary defense against ballistic missiles is the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, a derivative of the Aegis Combat System already aboard most U.S. Navy vessels. The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System launches an interceptor to destroy an incoming ballistic missile at varying points in its trajectory.
The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System has been tested 53 times and has an approximate 80% intercept success rate.
Aegis Radar
More importantly, in these tests, Aegis is typically able to identify an incoming missile and launch an interceptor within times ranging from 90 seconds to approximately four minutes of the missile’s launch. At its maximum range of 4,000 miles, and its top speed of Mach 18, a DF-26 would take approximately 20 minutes to strike its target. This gives Aegis plenty of time to launch an interceptor, and perhaps enough time to launch a second, if the initial interceptor misses its target. Certainly, the Aegis is not a guarantee, although it is the only system which has a chance of intercepting such an ASBM. The United States has sufficiently demonstrated its ability to destroy slower moving, shorter
range ballistic missiles, in the Red Sea. These Houthi ballistic missiles are likely of the Burkan-2 type, which is a knockoff an Iranian Qiam-1 missile or a Scud, and likely has a range of 500 miles with a supersonic top speed of below Mach 5. This means that the Houthis’ missile would likely take a minimum of 8 minutes from launching to strike its target.
Additionally, the Pentagon is preparing to counter the threat from hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV), which are weapons traveling at Mach 5 – Mach 10, with high maneuverability (which ballistic missiles lack.) The PRC has, as they often do, over-hyped the development of its DF-17 HGV. In May 2023, Ukrainian forces used their new Patriot SAM system to destroy a Russian HVG, a mission for which the Patriot was not designed. This supports the notion that the United States’ present missile defense systems are more than capable of countering the threat from HGVs. The United States has also committed itself to improving that capability, with numerous upgrades to the Aegis system, the first of which could occur by 2025.
Rep. Wittman Details China Threat Committee
Finally, the U.S. Navy is increasingly fielding directed energy weapons (DEW) and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities which might be capable of disabling or destroying China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles. The advantages of a DEW system are obvious — light travels approximately 874,030 times faster than the speed of sound (Mach 1), which theoretically increases its ability to intercept fast moving ballistic missiles. Hypothetically, DEWs could even be used to destroy ballistic missiles that have already left the atmosphere, although the United States is nowhere near developing the requisite technology. Most Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are already outfitted with some DEW/EW capabilities. In fact, many U.S. Naval destroyers have been equipped with an EW device called the Optical Dazzling Interdictor Navy (ODIN). However, little has been made public about the operational capabilities of ODIN, and there is no way to ascertain whether it has the capability to disable or destroy China’s ASBMs.
China Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile
Perhaps the most accurate analysis of China’s ASBM capability was given by Andrew Erickson, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI), who stated in an article for 19FortyFive:
“It [China] 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.”
China’s ASBM capability is a threat to the United States’ naval capabilities, but it is a threat that the U.S. has a partial ability to defend against with its present technology, and it is a threat that the United States’ is certain to be able to counteract by deploying cutting-edge technology in the next decade. If China is counting upon its anti-ship ballistic missiles to win an impending war with the United States, it might be in for a nasty surprise.
Williams is a Warrior Editorial Fellow and is a writer and researcher currently studying at the University of Connecticut. Williams’ work has been published in newspapers, magazines, and journals, such as:, Geopolitics Magazine, Modern Diplomacy, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Democracy Paradox, Diario Las Américas, International Affairs Forum, Fair Observer, History Is Now Magazine, American Diplomacy, etc.
