Posted on 01/01/2011 12:42:17 PM PST by darkwing104
Adm. Robert Willard, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun that China is deploying its new Dong Feng-21D anti-ship ballistic missile they publicly claim can sink U.S. aircraft carriers. The Admiral stated “this kind of capability should be a concern to the region, and it poses a challenge to any naval or air operations that would be conducted in that area were it to be employed.”
What is a Dong Feng-21D?
The Dong Feng-21D is a land-based guided missile that launches it war-head into space and returns it to earth at ten times the speed of sound while maneuvering to strike a moving target. Updates and tracking will be provided by satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles and radar all linked by a communications network, most likely, provided by military satellites.
Since the targets will be out of sight of ground base units it would have to be dependent on air and space borne
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
History settled the debate. Let's not get caught exposed again.
Wiki: "HMS Prince of Wales (pennant number 53) was a King George V-class battleship of the Royal Navy, built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, England. The Prince of Wales had a brief but active career, helping to stop the Bismarck and carrying Winston Churchill to the Newfoundland Conference; however, her sinking by Japanese land-based bombers in the Far East in 1941 is one of the events that led to the end of the battleship being considered the predominant class in naval warfare."
Hubris can kill.
The Clinton is the code name for the Bill version of the missile.
The Clin2ton is the code name for the Hillary version of the missile.
The Clinton is the code name for the Bill version of the missile.
The Clin2ton is the code name for the Hillary version of the missile.
Where are we going to get a space shuttle? Last flight scheduled for April 2011. Fleet is being scattered.
Sorry, but your comparison is simply invalid and inapplicable. The same was said about antiship cruise missiles like the Exocent making navies obsolete. That was obviously wrong., as are almost all claims about new 'superweapons' making whole classes of primary weapons systems 'useless' and 'obsolete'.
You clearly do not understand just how difficult a modern carrier is to sink. A carrier is literally a small floating city, and has thousands of watertight compartments. To sink one, you need a to breach a significant percentage of those compartments. This weapon is not even remotely capable of accomplishing that. They are in no way the quantum advancement represented by the introduction of aerial warfare. They are merely a different means of delivering an explosive warhead the size of an aircraft bomb on target.
Even in WWII, our carriers were able to absorb multiple direct hits by 1000 pound and larger armor-piercing bombs and not be sunk. Modern carriers are much larger and have far better firefighting and damage control equipment. There have been a number of cases where fires in the hangar decks of modern carriers have led to the explosion of several aircraft fully loaded with ordnance. This involved a hell of a lot more explosives; tens of thousands of pounds of them; detonating within the ship than a half-dozen direct hits from these Chinese missiles could deliver. Our carriers not only survived these incidents, they returned to port under their own power.
So the idea that these Chinese missiles can actually sink a carrier is fantasy. They could, if they somehow got past our Aegis anti-missile defenses, certainly damage a carrier, but the same is true of any weapon system aimed at carriers. That is the nature of war; attack and defense. This is just another new warhead delivery system for which we already have a good defense.
We’d better be thinking of a new POTUS because the one we have isn’t going to retaliate.
Probably their allies the Clintons.
No sarcasm needed.....
Paid for and developed, by one-sided “Free Trade”.
It will get worse.
Darn right. It's like the notion that USAF bases and facilities are less vulnerable than 30kt aircraft carriers.
All of which have been functionally deactivated by Komrade Kenyan.
Don’t forget popping the “three gorges” dam. Worth 5 times the cost of a carrier, and that’s not counting the lost electricity and damage downstream.
Jezz, it was just a few days ago when this missile was announced as still in the pre-testing stage, now it is not only tested, manufactured, and deployed as operational.... my those Chinese sure move fast.
some tru spokes, drop it a little..... those white walls are redickulus!!!
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