Monday, March 29, 2010
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
China Testing Ballistic Missile 'Carrier-Killer' - 'Last week, Adm. Robert Willard, the head of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), made an alarming, but little-noticed disclosure. China, he told legislators, was "developing and testing a conventional anti-ship ballistic missile based on the DF-21/CSS-5 [medium-range ballistic missile] designed specifically to target aircraft carriers." What, exactly, does this mean? Evidence suggests that China has been developing an anti-ship ballistic missile, or ASBM, since the 1990s. But this is the first official confirmation that it has advanced to the stage of actual testing. If they can be deployed successfully, Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles would be the first capable of targeting a moving aircraft carrier strike group from long-range, land-based mobile launchers. And if not countered properly, this and other "asymmetric" systems -- ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, torpedoes, and sea mines -- could potentially threaten U.S. operations in the western Pacific, as well as in the Persian Gulf...'
