With the US increasingly focused on confronting China in the Pacific, Beijing’s Navy continues to be hyped up in Washington. The US military is spending more on ship-killer missiles, and the head of US Indio-Pacific Command says the Marines need more money to target Chinese ships.
According to Defense News, last month, the US Navy and Air Force signed a contract for dozens of new Lockheed Martin-made Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM). The contract is for 137 LRASMs and is worth approximately $414 million.
Other branches of the military are seeking anti-ship missiles. Adm. Phil Davidson, the head of US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), scolded Congress for not approving a request made by the Marines for $125 million in 2021 to buy nearly 50 Tomahawk missiles that can be launched from land.
“I would say continuing to cut that in the hope for some future capability is not meeting the time-needs that we have to address Chinese threats … in theater right now,” he told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
Davidson has his hand out to Congress for an additional $27 billion in funding for INDOPACOM. Among Davidson’s wishlist is a new missile system placed along the First Island Chain, which stretches from islands south of Japan, through Taiwan, the Philippines, and down to Malaysia.
China is already surrounded by US military bases as it is, and Washington has grown increasingly more confrontational in the region by sending warships through sensitive areas like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
What the US fails to understand China is probably way ahead of them in defending their ships with anti missile missiles at the same time targetting US carriers , what the US is banking on is the fact the US is thousands of miles away hitting Chinas mainland without China hitting the US mainland , hence all the US bases surrounding China , however this could be a case of a false sense of security .
If the US thinks China will not attack carrier groups if they attack China, they are seriously mistaken, and I would suggest that they would not hesitate to nuke them either! with the promise that the Continental US would also be targeted! China well remembers the Boxer rebellion as well as the Japanese invasion! Never again!
‘We’re going to lose fast’
re: Washington has grown increasingly more confrontational in the region by sending warships through sensitive areas like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
Let’s look on the bright side:
The US by its silly FONOPS has demonstrated that:
1. China’s adjacent open seas are available to any ship, commercial or naval, that chooses to sail through them.
2. China’s territorial seas on the other hand are not available for provocations, it’s the law (UNCLOS) and just common sense.
I claim that other countries in the area are observing these two factors and congratulating China. They ain’t stupid. This is one reason why the US does not have and will not have any allies in Southeast Asia, in ASEAN. And so much for the constant prattling out of Washington regarding freedom of navigation and freedom from coercion in the South and East China Seas . . blah blah.
US freedom of the seas, remember when they asked Britain to seize an Iranian Ship sailing through the straits of Gibraltar in International waters, or a ship near Venezuela in International Waters, so much for the rhetoric of Freedom of Navigation!
Of course the elephant in the room is that the US is challenging China on China’s Doorstep! China’s landmass is an unsinkable Aircraft carrier, it also has extremely short supply lines, and if attacked has the almost instantaneous ability to sink every US war Ship in the region in a glowing Thermo nuclear explosion, With an immediate retaliation that could see The Pentagon and White House become a slag heap for a century or two, they are not Hiroshima bpmbs they are much more powerful than that. Would China win…… no, but be sure as hell, America would not win either! China can put over 300 one hundred kiloton plus Nukes in the air in minutes, less than one hour later the US has a major Civilian catastrophe on its hands! No one wins thermo nuclear war!
Regarding another headline (not taking comments) — Quad Backs ‘Democratic’ Indo-Pacific, Cites Chinese ‘Aggression’ — the second statement is baloney. There was no mention of China or any of its seas at the Quad summit. . . . . here. The only area mentioned by anyone was “Indo-Pacific,” a region which encompasses about half the earth’s surface.
China’s DF-26 missile has a range of over 5,000 km (3,100 mi) and may conduct precision nuclear or conventional strikes against ground and naval targets. It is China’s first conventionally-armed ballistic missile capable of reaching Guam and the American military installations located there; this has led to the missile being referred to by netizens as the “Guam Express” or “Guam Killer”. Guam is abut 2,000 statute miles from China.
China’s DF-26 ‘Guam Express’ reaches 10x speed of sound and may conduct precision nuclear or conventional strikes against ground and naval targets. The range (radius) of an F-35C fighter jet is 615 nm, 1230nm total.. Do the math. A carrier beyond DF-26 range, at 2500 nm from targets, is four F-35C “ranges” away. That’s several refuelings going in on the in-and-out -35 strikes, and several coming back (unless the pilot chooses to eject post-strike). . . .impossible. Also — the F-35 has some stealth on ingress but not on egress, with its super-hot engine, largest engine ever in a fighter jet. It’s a kamikaze op.
That means that missiles have obsoleted not only Guam but also aircraft carriers because they are out-ranged, similar to the situation years ago when carriers obsoleted battleships because carrier aircraft out-ranged gunfire.