A study in China Journal of Test and Measurement Technologies concluded, citing a series of software simulations, that the communist nation’s hypersonic missile technology could destroy the formidable USS Gerald R. Ford fleet of aircraft carriers avoiding ship defense systems, South China Morning Post reported Tuesday.
The war games add to growing anxiety in the United States over communist China’s hypersonic capabilities, exacerbated by an alleged missile test in 2021 that a US intelligence source admitted Washington had “no idea the way “Beijing had succeeded undetected. More recently, the trove of alleged Defense Department documents that surfaced on video game chat platform Discord included an alleged top-secret Pentagon report describing a Chinese hypersonic missile that had “a high probability of penetrating” missile defenses. American ballistics. The missile in question, according to the alleged leak, could potentially bomb Guam.
THE South China Morning Posttranslating the Journal of Test and Measurement Technologies study, relayed that the responsible research team used war game software to play out 20 different scenarios in which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) bombed the Gerald R. Ford fleet, which in the simulations was located in the South China Sea. The war game depicted the fleet approaching a “China-claimed island” in the region, according to the newspaper, and refusing to turn back when harassed by Chinese military vessels.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, illegally asserting sovereignty over the territory of five nations: Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. The US Navy regularly holds freedom of navigation exercises, or FONOPs, in the South China Sea to publicly reject China’s claims, which an international court ruled illegitimate in 2016.
In the war game, Chinese scientists – a team led by Professor Cao Hongsong of North China University – essentially overwhelmed US missile defense systems so that hypersonic missiles could pass through them.
“Over 20 intense battles, Chinese forces sank the USS Gerald R. Ford fleet of aircraft carriers with a volley of 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles, in a simulation run on a consumer war game software platform used by the Chinese military,” said the morning shift relayed, later adding, “Cao’s team determined that the three-wave attack is capable of eliminating an average of 5.6 out of six surface ships—resulting in the ‘total destruction’ of the carrier group.”
The Hong Kong newspaper noted that the test is the first of its kind made public, and why China allowed the release of the results of such a sensitive military study “remains unknown”. He also warned that software simulations could be useful, but were not as reliable as real-world tests in providing reliable data on the effectiveness of a given military strategy.
China’s hypersonic missile capabilities have become an increasingly visible source of concern among US defense experts. In 2018, General John Hyten, then head of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told the US Senate that the US military did not have sufficient defense capabilities to thwart a hypersonic missile attack.
Xi Jinping, newly elected president of the People’s Republic of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC, makes a public pledge of allegiance to the Constitution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 10 2023. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“We have no defense that could deny the employment of such a (hypersonic) weapon against us, so our response would be our deterrent, which would be the triad and the nuclear capabilities we have to respond to such a threat. .,” Hyden told lawmakers, recommending that the armed forces “pursue improved detection capabilities to be able to track, characterize and attribute threats, wherever they originate.”
The hypersonic missile test reported in 2021 has caused shock and outrage among defense watchers in the United States, as reports have emerged that US intelligence agencies did not have information about the test before it was carried out. doesn’t actually happen. The test was significant, sources told the Financial Times, as the hypersonic missile flew around the Earth in low orbit, at a speed and height designed to avoid missile defense systems.
“(W)e have to understand that it’s worse than Sputnik. Because we are further behind than we were on Sputnik, where we were only six months away from our first Atlas ICBM launch in 1957,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) warned at about the Chinese missile test at the time. “Today we won’t be able to get hypersonics in the field until late 22 or early 23. Raytheon CEO just said that we’ve been behind China in hypersonics for years.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denied FinancialTimes report of a hypersonic missile test, saying China was instead testing the “reusability of spacecraft”.
A year later, the Chinese government released a video of an alleged DF-17 hypersonic missile, which the state world times propaganda media branded as “aircraft carrier killer”. The state-run newspaper linked the video’s beginnings to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) visit to the sovereign nation of Taiwan, which China illegally claims as a rogue province of the People’s Republic. .
“The DF-17 will play a vital role in safeguarding China’s territorial integrity, as regions such as the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and Northeast Asia are all within its reach.” , said the world times quoted a regime-approved expert in 2019 when Chinese officials first unveiled the missile.
The alleged Pentagon documents in this year’s Discord leaks dealt with another missile model identified as the DF-27.
“The DF-27 is designed to improve (China’s) ability to hold at-risk targets beyond the second island chain and has a high probability of penetrating US ballistic missile defense,” the documents said.
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