Reports from various news outlets over the last day or so note China has "again carried out a land-based mid-course missile interception test within its territory Sunday."
Xinhua in its report explained "The test has reached the preset goal" citing an official from the Information Bureau of China's Defense Ministry.
"The test is defensive in nature and targets no other country," explained the ministry official.
This would mark the second instance that China has announced such a test. A similar anti-missile test was successfully attempted in Jan 2010.
Global Times noted the test was completed "hours after the U.S. conducted a test flight of its own missile interceptor."
Lan Yun, a military observer and editor with Modern Ships magazine, told the Global Times that "China is still far from forming an operational anti-missile shield, as the U.S. has carried out at least 16 interception tests and China has only done two so far. Even the U.S. GMD (Ground-Based Mid-course Defense) is far from mature."
I spoke today to frequent Diplomat contributor and friend Dr. Andrew Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College to get his thoughts on the test and American missile defense in general:
"Chinese policy makers are clearly pursuing significant ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability, and should recognize that continued U.S. efforts in this area represent an unavoidable example of a great power's safeguarding its security amid a substantial, growing range of foreign missile threats. To the extent that they are unwilling to expend political capital and prioritize strategic interests sufficiently to counteract their pariah ally North Korea's increasingly provocative ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development, testing, and posturing, they must accept that Pyongyang's behavior is a key factor driving U.S. BMD development and deployment. U.S. policy makers, for their part, must recognize that BMD is not a panacea, and does not operate in a strategic vacuum. It is expensive, incomplete in coverage, and encourages rather than dissuades Chinese improvement of strategic nuclear and ballistic missile forces. While useful for other purposes–particularly containing potential damage from provocative behavior by pariah states developing ballistic missiles of limited capability such as North Korea and Iran–BMD cannot be used to deny top-tier missile power China's secure second-strike, a capability that Beijing is determined, and increasingly able, to achieve."
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The India is most powerful in the universe
When India say:"We will test missle" the whole world will shake(They don't know where it will hit)
Microtiger
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Sounds familiar? That's what American people say. Recently you hear a lot of gun shootings in American cities. For what an average American thinks, he needs to carry a gun to protect himself. I think China is just applying this American logic to protect itself. Look at this! you have all these American troops with guns, missles and warships in Japan, S.Korea, Australia, Afghanistan, and other islands. China's neighborhood is surrounded by guns. Doesn't it make sense you need a powerful gun if you live in this neighborhood?
Imran Pangilinan
Nope. China only needs better weapons so that they can continue tiananmen square massacre
Liang1a
Derek wrote:
January 31, 2013 at 7:33 am
It's fascinating quite how far American delusions about BMD have metastasized.
Given the weakness of the Cult of St. Ronnie in Beijing, I had assumed the PRC generally understood that midcourse ballistic missile defense is a fiendishly difficult task, and that the defender has to outspend the attacker by two orders of magnitude at the minimum if he wants to hit much of anything. But that would imply that the only possible target of this shot was North Korea, which somehow doesn't seem all that plausible.
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It is not all that hard to hit a warhead. The reason why it is so difficult for the American anti-missile kill vehicle to hit its target is that Americans try to hit the warhead with the kill vehicle in a frontal collisiion. This means it has to hit a moving target no bigger than 1 sq. meter in size. The task is much simpler if you can shoot a spray of pellets over an area of 1,000 sq. meters. This increases the chance of hitting the warhead by 100,000%. And if you install an aiming mechanism to pinpoint the location of the warhead and "aim" the "gun" at the warhead then the probability of htting the warhead is increased even more. Given that kind of a "shotgun" that can aim and shoot a large number of pellets over a large area it is almost certain to hit the warhead. I think this is the Chinese strategy which has been proven successful.
Of course, there are technologies to evade the anti-missile such as aluminum chaffs, smoke, balloon, decoys, etc. So the cost of stopping a large number of warheads in an all out nuclear war is very high. If 1,000 warheads were launched accompanied by 5,000 decoys then it would take at least 6,000 kill-vehicles to destroy them all. Still, 6,000 kill vehicles cost much less than 1,000 cities. And if mass produced the cost of each anti-missile missile would be much reduced. It may cost less than $1 million each. So even deploying 6,000 missiles will cost only $6 billion. And even if the cost were increased 10 times they would still only cost $60 billion. This is probably the same as 3 aircraft carrier battle groups. 3 aircraft carrier groups are not a game changer. But an anti-missile system that can stop 6,000 nuclear warheads is absolutely a game changer.
Derek
"If 1,000 warheads were launched accompanied by 5,000 decoys then it would take at least 6,000 kill-vehicles to destroy them all. Still, 6,000 kill vehicles cost much less than 1,000 cities."
Two points:
1) The decoy/RV ratio can be much greater than five to one. A balloon decoy adds roughly a kilogram to bus payload — even the smallest warheads are two orders of magnitude heavier. Granted, you can overcome this to some extent with nuclear interceptors (which force the attacker to use a lot of fuel mass lofting the decoys onto different trajectories, or let several be destroyed by one strike), but this doesn't seem to be anyone's idea.
2) 6,000 KKVs probably do cost less than the damage caused by 1,000 warheads. But they cost a hell of a lot more (an order of magnitude at least) than launching 1,000 warheads and 5,000 decoys. There are a lot of countries China can outspend by a factor of 10. The US is not one of them.
3) Given that Chinese thinking about deterrence has consistently viewed even a very few warheads as enough to deter any plausible adversary, with anything beyond that being redundant and wasteful, they'd be under extremely high pressure to hit absolutely all of the targets. This makes the job even harder.
Derek
It's fascinating quite how far American delusions about BMD have metastasized.
Given the weakness of the Cult of St. Ronnie in Beijing, I had assumed the PRC generally understood that midcourse ballistic missile defense is a fiendishly difficult task, and that the defender has to outspend the attacker by two orders of magnitude at the minimum if he wants to hit much of anything. But that would imply that the only possible target of this shot was North Korea, which somehow doesn't seem all that plausible.
Kim’s Uncle
I guess all the sino nazis did not heed my advice not to follow Nazi Germany example of waging war of conquest for natural resources! To try dominate other people through military means is a very primitive impulse that civilized do follow. Japan and Germany today are respected because they evolve into civilized countries that respect their neighbors and respect their own citizens while china still has the style of government of nazi germany once had!!! Most Germans understand that Germany suffered and cause great pain to other people because of a dictatorship so china should learn from Germany not to follow the path of militarism and dominance or else china will be like Hiroshima!
Microtiger
"Japan and Germany today are respected because they evolve into civilized countries that respect their neighbors…" I agree that today Germany indeed repects their neighbors as do the neighbors repect Germany because the German has really admitted to their wrongdoing and learned from the past. But Japan is not. If you have a chance to interview the senior citizens in China, S.Korea and some other Asian countries who were invaded by Japan in WWII, they are still very angry. Today, there are a lot of rightist politicians in Japan government. They deny the war crimes committed during the WWII, e.g. Nanking Massacre in China in 1937, and "Comfort Women" in S.Korea, China and Phillippines. Those politicians even try to brainwash the youngsters by whitewashing the history in their textbooks. And just read the news about Yasukuni Shrine. Every year, tons of Japanese officials including a number of former Japan's prime ministers go there to worship the Class A war criminals. This really irritates Japan's neighboring countries. Is there any respect? You can imagine what would happen if Germany Chancellor visited Hitler's tomb every year. Poland, France, UK and a whole lof of other EU countries would stage a protest. So, although China has yet to win the respect of the world by improving their human right record, it doesn't automatically mean Japan is sacred on its own. Just be careful when you make a judgment. The world is not as simple as black and white.