Grimly Alarming 'War Games'

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"China’s DF-26, an anti-ship missile tested and 'demonstrated' by the People’s Liberation Army reportedly able to travel 2,000 miles to destroy carriers, does present a credible threat to be taken seriously. Yet much of the hype seems to leave out certain critical comments made by senior U.S. Navy leaders and various adaptations the modern Navy has made to respond to or 'counter' China’s often-discussed A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) strategy."

"With a range of up to 2,500 miles and 4,000-pound payload, with satellite targeting the DF-26 in theory could strike U.S. Navy warships across the western Pacific Ocean. 'Even when launched from deeper inland areas of China, the DF-26 has a range far-reaching enough to cover the South China Sea', an unnamed military expert told Global Times in a report several years ago."

"However, upon closer examination and careful reading of public comments from senior Navy officials, there certainly seems to be room for debate on this question. While certainly nobody questions the seriousness of a threat of this kind, and clearly the Chinese weapons are taken seriously, yet some of the threat language might accurately be assessed as 'hype' given the steady stream of ongoing advances in layered Carrier and Carrier Strike Group defenses."

Kris Osborn, Military Affairs Editor, 19FortyFive, President, Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization

DF-26

According to boasts by Chinese scientists, the new hypersonic weapons China possesses could destroy the newest aircraft carrier in the American Navy. A research team on a war game software platform that China's military uses, indicated Chinese forces sinking the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier fleet with a volley of 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles. A report in the South China Morning Post claimed the results of the hypersonic strikes, made public for the first time in a May paper published by the Chinese-language Journal of Test and Management Technology. 

Computer-generated battle scenarios are often used by military planners to game out strategies. However, they cannot be overly relied upon in real-life conflict where terrain, weather and other unforeseen factors are capable of disrupting weaponry, warn experts in the field. The strategic scenario used a platform of an attack on American vessels that had steamed toward an island claimed in the disputed South China Sea by China.

Some of the missiles in the three-wave attack, according to researchers, were fired from as far distant as the Gobi Desert. The entire play relies on a diplomatic confrontation over the waterway and its rich resources that has escalated for years in a landscape of overlapping territorial claims between regional nations and an increasingly aggressive Beijing.

With China determined to extend its reach by claiming and militarizing islands, reefs and rocks, the United States Navy has accelerated its own 'freedom of navigation' patrols in universally recognized international waters that Beijing claims as its own. China has been developing its missile arsenal rapidly, including hypersonic technology, as a reflection of its focus on building its naval capabilities.

The Chinese military had three days earlier tested a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile named the DF-27, according to a leak of a top-secret report, by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence directorate, several months back. The DF-27, according to the document, possessed a high probability of capacity to evade U.S. ballistic missile defence, designed to boost Beijing's ability to strike large parts of the Pacific. That would include the U.S. territory of Guam, and its strategic military base.

China last year deployed versions of the new missile capable of attacking land targets and ships. Also revealed was that the DF-27 has increased potential as a "carrier killer" vastly out-performing its predecessors. Researchers from the North University of China in the latest war game, concluded that almost every U.S. surface vessel was shattered by the hypersonic attack and sank eventually.

USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)