Posted on 09/08/2013 2:32:05 PM PDT by neverdem
The DF-21D is China’s answer to America’s carriers, with an unusual origin in the Kosovo War
In 1999, the U.S. was engaged in an air and missile war with Serbia. As NATO bombs exploded around Belgrade — part of a campaign to force an end to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serb forces — several U.S. missiles slammed into the Chinese embassy. It was the most controversial U.S. action of the war.
China’s leaders were outraged, but could do little in response. The result? The bombing became a pivotal moment in the decision to pursue a sophisticated weapons project: a ballistic missile that can sink American aircraft carriers from 1,900 miles away.
That’s the history according to a new book from Andrew Erickson, a specialist on the Chinese military at the U.S. Naval War College. The book has wonky title: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories and Strategic Implications. But it’s the most comprehensive overview of a weapon — the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile — that poses perhaps the greatest threat to American aircraft carriers that’s not a nuclear bomb.
“The bottom line is that the era of ‘ASBM denial’ is over,” Erickson writes. “China’s ASBM is not science fiction. It is not a ‘smoke and mirrors’ bluff. The DF-21D is not an aspirational capability that the United States can afford to ignore until some point in the future.”
Usually, carriers are incredibly tough to kill, sitting far off a coastline and outside the range of whatever most countries can throw at it. Escort ships are prowling for submarine threats, and air-defense missiles and carrier-borne fighter jets scan for enemy bombers that can launch sea-skimming cruise missiles. But a ballistic missile that can target ships can bypass all these defenses while being launched from land at the same time.
There’s still a lot of...
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
Word is that some of the functions of Milosevic’s secret police were being carried out at the Chinese Embassy as a de-facto safehouse.
The JDAM simply glides to the GPS coordinates it is supplied with:
How likely is it that the US military programmed in the WRONG coordinates...?
The Embassy was struck because it was being used as an instrument of WAR.
I didn’t agree with that war, but that’s not the point.
And be prepared for them to bomb your embassy and assets...
The Embassy was struck because it was being used as an instrument of WAR.
Everything the Chinese produce is junk. Their military is incompetent. The only advantages they have are numbers and our treasonous political leadership.
IIRC, that was a brand new Chinese embassy that was not open for business yet or only partially open.
Many speculated that there might have been ‘reasons’ it met with the ‘accident’.
In a conventional war the asymmetry in troop strength between China and its adversaries will make up for a lot of weaknesses.
Also recall that a Chinese sub came up undetected in the middle of a US fleet not so long ago.
China may be itching to try out their new ‘bath tub’ toys.
what i heard was actually the downed f117 that was shot down there was not destroyed by the air force, (stupid) so they sold it to the chinese. They moved it into the embassy garage... THEN they decided it probably wouldnt be good to let the chinese have it. BOOM.
Well...the US took this action because the Chinese would deny they’d been permitting any illicit activity at their Embassy, and the US would averr their, “embarrassing mistake”.
The agreement was prolly:
1. China gets to operate ALL whizbang gear to collect the US electronic order of battle in-situ, with that take being harvested for use in some possible future conflict with the US (Straits).
2. Milo’s guys get to use some some large portion of the Embassy to do their dirty work.
But then the big, unexpected whoosh-BOOM.
“How likely is it that the US military programmed in the WRONG coordinates...?”
About as likely as NASA calculating orbital velocities in feet per second, but imputing them in meters per second thus causing a billion-dollar Martian space probe to crash on the Martian surface. Bureaucratic error. It happens. Also, nobody is shooting at the engineers at JPL while they go a out their business.
All that said, the chances of that kind of error are less than the chances that the US attack was intentional. And if it was, the Chinese certainly know the reasons for it.
Exactly. You can't claim missile malfunction when what, 3 hit? The odds of three missiles suffering the same oddball malfunction are about the same as Capt. Kirk beaming down beside me as I type this.
Putting in the wrong numbers? Highly doubtful. I don't know the procedures for loading them. But I've got to assume the basic intel would be checked, double checked, and triple checked. Then the strike approval would be checked and double checked. Finally, the target load has to have at least one check, if not several. All along the way nobody pulled up google maps and took a peek? Seems like it was intentional.
Then again, we did fly a B-52 with nuclear weapons to the wrong base. So who knows. I believe the missiles were probably in the concept / requirements stage long before that. The Chinese have always struck me as extremely practical, pragmatic, and patient when it comes to military strategy. Why spend trillions on a blue water navy (carriers, escort ships, air wings, etc.) to oppose the US fleet. A fleet with decades of a head start? Why not a fraction of the resources to build a weapon that can directly oppose the carriers. Then build out a regional navy to project influence just as far as you want to. For now.
The strike on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade had nothing to do with an aircraft carrier. It was carried out by B-2’s operating from Whiteman AFB, MO.
A carrier is a formidable weapon against a technologically inferior enemy. When used against another superpower such as Russia or China it is dead meat, as theirs would be dead meat if used against us. If you can see it from orbital altitude or know where it is by other means, you can kill it.
Oh, Bernie.
Aircraft carriers were problematic in WW-II, they may in fact be outmoded now. You couldn’t design an easier target for a missile.
Ping.
Black powder rockets are not a threat to our carriers.
Warfighting ping.
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