Amid the backdrop of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the US has sent ships to waters near Taiwan. While China has the largest navy in the world, it cannot match the US' capabilities. Which is why it has been focussing on developing ‘carrier-killers’
File image, provided by the US Navy, shows the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson participating in a group sail during the Rim of the Pacific exercise off the coast of Hawaii, 26 July, 2018. Petty Officer 1st Class Arthurgwain L. Marquez/U.S. Navy via AP
As Nancy Pelosi kicks off a tour of Asia with a visit to Taiwan in the offing and China warning of a 'possible military response', the US has moved an aircraft carrier, three US Navy ships, and two amphibious assault ships carrying stealth fighters in waters near Taiwan.
The move by the US is sure to spark further anger in Beijing, which considers self-ruled Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, the relatively narrow strip of ocean between the self-governing island and the Chinese mainland, as its territory – to be seized one day, by force if necessary.
Beijing has already warned it would regard a Pelosi visit as a major provocation.
While there are reports of several Chinese planes flying close to the median line of the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Tuesday morning and several Chinese warships staying close to unofficial dividing line since Monday, Beijing knows its navy cannot directly take on the US Navy, and is especially outgunned when it comes to carriers.
Which is exactly why the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has sought to develop its anti-ship ballistic missiles – also known as “carrier-killers”.
A Congressional Research Service report from the US, discussing China's naval capabilities, noted: "China is developing hypersonic glide vehicles that, if incorporated into China's anti-ship ballistic missiles, could make China's anti-ship ballistic missiles more difficult to intercept."
In April, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) released a video clip depicting a hitherto unknown missile being fired from a Type 055 guided-missile cruiser.
The UK newspaper The Times had reported that the PLA Navy had launched a YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship missile – which poses an even greater threat to US aircraft carriers than the DF-21D and DF-26B road-mobile anti-ship ballistic missiles – from a Type 055 large destroyer.
Let’s take a closer look at these missiles and why they may have changed the game on the high seas when it comes to carriers:
DF-21D and DF-26B
Both the DF-21D and the DF-26 are both understood to have warheads with enough maneuverability to hit large, relatively slow-moving ships such as aircraft carriers.
As per 19fortyfive.com, China conducted test launches of both platforms into the South China Sea a day after Beijing accused the United States of sending a U-2 spy plane into a “no-fly zone” during a PLAN live-fire naval drill in the Bohai Sea off China’s north coast.
As per thedrive.com, with an estimated range of between 1,200 kilometres, the DF-21D is thought to carry a conventional warhead and is able to maneuver dynamically during its reentry phase, providing it with the ability to attack moving warships.
As per theDrive.com, the DF-21D missile, moving with the hypersonic terminal velocity common to ballistic missiles, provide warship captains with a particularly challenging threat.
“Hurtling toward a surface combatant at hypersonic speed and at a steep angle of descent, most traditional naval defensive systems would be rendered redundant,” the piece wrote.
The DF-26B is an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), a category consisting of notably longer-range weapons able to hit targets out to distances between 1,864 miles and 3,417 miles, as per the report.
China the DF-26B (Dong Feng-26) during a military parade in September 2015, as per the report. It can be used in both conventional and nuclear strikes against ground as well as naval targets.
It has also been described as a “carrier-killer” due to how it could be used to target the US Navy’s fleet of Nimitz– and Ford-class nuclear-powered supercarriers, as per 19fortyfive.com.
Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles travel past Tiananmen Gate during a military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Beijing on 3 September, 2015. Reuters
The YJ-21 can be viewed as the naval equivalent of the DF-21D, giving Chinese naval warfare a major boost in capability since the missile can travel anywhere in the world's oceans aboard ships.
China has thus become the first country in the world to operationally field such a missile from a naval vessel.
From what can be seen in the April video clip, the new Chinese weapon has small fins and a bi-conic nose. The missile's small control surfaces suggest it is not a surface-to-air missile (SAM), a class that needs to be extremely manoeuvrable in order to hit fast-moving aircraft.
The YJ-21 was cold-launched from Wuxi's stern vertical launch system (VLS), meaning it was expelled from the launcher cell by gas, before the missile's own engine ignited once it was in the air and clear of the ship. Chinese VLS cells can accommodate missiles up to 9 metres long and with an 850 mm diameter, so the YJ-21 must be within these parameters.
No performance specifications are yet known of the YJ-21, but its range could speculatively be anywhere from 1,000 km to 1,500 km. The South China Morning Post, which is not always accurate in its reporting on the PLA, credits the YJ-21 with a terminal velocity of Mach 10, or ten times the speed of sound.
Its heritage being still murky, the YJ-21 may have been developed from the Chinese CM-401 missile, which is comparable to Russia's Iskander short-range ballistic missile that has been used against Ukraine in recent weeks. When the CM-401 debuted in 2018, it was said that it was destined to be fitted on warships in the future. However, the YJ-21 adds a large booster compared to the CM-401.
The elongated and tapered manoeuvring re-entry vehicle and short rocket booster have clearly been optimized to fit inside a confined VLS cell aboard a ship. The YJ-21's sudden revelation does not come as a complete surprise, however. The US Department of Defense (DoD) suggested back in 2020 that China would arm its Type 055 cruisers with this type of weapon.
In fact, in the Pentagon's most recent annual report on the state of the Chinese military, the DoD stated: "The Renhai (Type 055) has 112 VLS cells and can carry a large loadout of weapons including anti-ship cruise missiles, SAMs, torpedoes and anti-submarine weapons, along with likely land-attack cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles when those become operational."
The latter part of that quote is the relevant one, with China's first-ever anti-ship ballistic missile now indeed appearing operational.
Another premonition of this kind of naval ballistic missile came during a lecture by the PLAN's retired Rear Admiral Zhao Dengping, who was former Director of the PLA Equipment Department.
Images of his lecture slides were leaked on the Chinese internet in 2017. One surprise among them was a depiction of a future ship-launched anti-ship ballistic missile flight profile, plus another lecture slide that indicated that Chinese warships could carry a "near-space hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile".
The YJ-21 was fired from the warship Wuxi, a Type 055 cruiser that had been commissioned in Qingdao just a month earlier, in March.
Its launch from an active-duty ship indicates the missile is almost certainly now in PLA service.
This has obviously occurred. This type of ballistic missile with a large warhead would be able to target enemy capital ships such as American aircraft carriers and help overwhelm the defences of surface combatants thanks to their great speed.
A combination of supersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic missiles would be a formidable one for any targeted warship.
The South China Morning Post quoted naval expert Li Jie as saying, "The pairing of Type 055 large destroyer and the YJ-21 is meant to counter US maritime hegemony in the region through anti-access and area denial."
The YJ-21 greatly extends the strike range of Type 055, even though the YJ-21's range does not have to be that great to present a serious threat. Although it can presumably receive targeting information from other assets, if the YJ-21 utilizes the ship's own sensors - instead of relying on a complex and perhaps vulnerable chain of satellites and drones - the new missile could be extremely effective.
Armed with this new class of ballistic missiles, Chinese Type 055s thus become arguably the most potent warships in the world thanks to their long-range firepower.
It is as yet unclear whether the YJ-21 will arm other PLAN warships such as the modern Type 052D destroyer.
The Type 055 cruiser, which displaces some 12,600 tonnes, is a very important platform for the PLAN. It is able to roam the world's oceans on its own merits or accompany Chinese aircraft carriers as part of the carrier's protective umbrella.
As the thedrive.com piece concluded: “…it can be envisaged that air-launched ASBMs and ship-launched YJ-21s would be deployed in concert with ground-based DF-21Ds to help keep US carrier strike groups at a distance far enough from Chinese shores to make their fighter aircraft and cruise useless.”
Maj Gen GG Dwivedi (Retd), writing in The Tribune, sounded the alarm about the PLA’s plans.
“The PLA Navy (PLAN) is in quest to acquire outreach to ‘far seas’. Its ships now regularly sail in the waters around Europe. PLAN is also turning attention to the Arctic (Polar Silk Road), the next maritime frontier. Numerically, China already has the largest navy in the world with more than 350 ships, although it lags behind the US in terms of capability. By 2035, PLAN plans to have over 450 ships. The Chinese Coast Guard is the largest in the world with over 100 ocean-going platforms,” he wrote.
Beijing increasing its ‘Rocket Force’ arsenal, estimated from 250-300 to around 700 by 2027, he warned.
"China has nearly 100 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, including DF-41, capable of delivering up to 10 warheads with a range of over 12,000 km. The number of DF-21 and DF-26 medium-range missiles has increased from 16 to 200 during the last few years. China is also known to have developed ‘Hypersonic Glide Vehicle’ and ‘Hypersonic Cruise Missile’”, Dwivedi warned.
Dwivedi added that China’s defence budget has increased almost ten-fold in the past two decades from $22.93 billion in 2000 to $230 billion in 2022. "Given that Beijing has historically under-reported its military expenditure, actual spending is estimated to be far higher," he wrote.
"China’s ongoing military reform process is the biggest military shake-up ever witnessed in generations. It is well aligned with the national goals and objectives. Beijing’s aggressiveness, especially after Xi came to power, is evident from its military activities in South China Sea, across the Taiwan Strait and on the LAC against India."
In any case, such new weapons represent a grave threat to naval targets.
They also signal the tremendous progress that China is making in weaponry, and in many ways leaving the USA in its wake.
A piece in the Global Times dismissed media reports of China's ship-launched, air-launched anti-ship ballistic missiles as 'merely speculative'.
Chinese military experts added that even if China does have such weapons, they are defensive in nature and would provide greater deterrence and deeper maritime defence against hostile warships. Only those with evil intentions would fear them, the experts said.
China has not announced the development of such weapons so all of this is merely speculation, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times.
The hype by foreign media reflected ‘their prejudice’ on China's normal national defence development, analysts added. China upholds a national defence strategy that is defensive in nature, and if the US does not make military provocations against China, including over the Taiwan question, it does not need to worry about the missiles, analysts speaking to the newspaper concluded.
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