In the last few years there have been so many articles, think pieces, and comments about the so-called DF-21D “Carrier Killer” Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile that there is really no reason here to post review them. USNIBlog readers should be up to speed.
I don’t think that, from a warfighting point of view, that is really the missile we should worry the most about.
Let’s review a few fundamentals:
1. Successfully targeting a moving ship in the wide Pacific Ocean that may or may not have decoys or other attractive distractions around it is very hard.
2. Islands do not move. The sea-shore profile does not change more than a tide. Targeting them, fixed location to fixed location, was a problem solved in the mid-20th Century. Here in the late part of the early 21st Century, that problem is solved in parallel by a variety of methods.
3. A lot of our Pacific military force is ashore in Japan, and increasingly Guam, with a flavoring recently in Darwin, Australia and Singapore.
With 1-3 above, let’s look at the chart.
On our end, I can come up with a variety of ways to either hard or soft kill a DF-21D. On their end, the kill chain from launcher to CVN is a multi-linked and delicate chain open to all sorts of exploitation by the defender.
How do you defend a land base, shore facility, or piers full of ships that are static, unmoving, and vulnerable in comparison? Your options are much fewer, and infinitely less effective. With the DF-26, you have a lot more of your rear area you need to defend.
We have talked a lot about what would happen if you lost a CVN, but what if you lost 80% of the tankers, early warning, tactical aircraft stationed ashore or ships pierside in Guam, Japan, and elsewhere along with their fuel and other supplies?
Are we ready for that?
Have we thought that through … or do we have some comfortable planning assumptions that enable our other entitled projections?
