Ch. 8: Crouching Tiger Serialization

The Game-Changing Aircraft Carrier Killer

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Question: Just how hard is it to hit an aircraft carrier traveling at 30 knots in open waters with a missile launched from a thousand miles away?

1.     Hard

2.     Very Hard

3.     Almost Impossible

In fact, this form of missile attack is so difficult that only one nation in the world has (maybe) been able to figure out how to do it – China.  Like the advent of the British Long Bow and trebuchet in medieval times, frame torpedo mines in the American Civil War, machine guns and tanks in World War I, and combat aircraft and aircraft carriers in World War II, the arrival of China’s “anti-ship ballistic missile” onto the world’s weapons stage is a truly game-changing event that now threatens to upset the entire balance of power in Asia.

At present, that increasingly tenuous balance of power between a rising China and much of the rest of Asia rests on the presence of American aircraft carrier strike groups and US forward bases in the region.  However, if China’s anti-ship ballistic missile can indeed destroy American carriers – there remains at least some conjecture about that – the entire foundation of America’s projection of power into the Asian theater would be destroyed as well.  In the process, China would finally realize the strategic dream of Admiral Liu Huaqing to break out of the First and Second Island Chains within which, at least from China’s view, China is now contained by a hegemonic American sea power.

To better understand the game-changing significance of China’s anti-ship ballistic missile, let’s first do a little Missiles 101.  As a general rule, there are two types of missiles that can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.

Cruise missiles are typically propelled throughout their flight not by rockets but by small jet engines.  Such cruise missiles never leave the earth’s atmosphere, they must be powered by their engines throughout their flight, and they often fly very low to the ground following the earth’s contours to avoid detection. 

In contrast, ballistic missiles are initially rocket-powered in the first stage of their journey, and they are typically launched into a high sub-orbital spaceflight above the earth’s atmosphere.  In this rarefied air, the ballistic missile can then travel in free space flight without substantial need of fuel, often for considerable distances; and this is their great advantage over typically much less expensive cruise missiles.  Of course, when the ballistic missile is ready to acquire its target, it goes into free fall in its re-entry stage into the Earth’s atmosphere, gaining great and deadly speed in the process.

The devil’s miracle of China’s anti-ship ballistic missile is that once it falls back towards Earth, it can quickly lock on to a relatively small target like an aircraft carrier or destroyer and even take evasive action on the way to destroying that target with great precision.  It’s not for nothing that China’s civilian and military leaders alike openly call this game-changing new weapon their “carrier killer.”

In truth, China’s anti-ship ballistic missile is just one of a broader class of so-called “asymmetric weapons” like cruise missiles, relatively inexpensive diesel-electric submarines, mines, and even small, missile-equipped high-speed catamarans.  These weapons are “asymmetric” in the sense they cost very little relative to the high value targets they seek to destroy.

For example, an anti-ship ballistic missile launched from the Chinese mainland or a conventional cruise missile fired from a fast-moving catamaran may cost China a few million dollars, but each has the firepower to destroy a $10 billion US aircraft carrier. And let’s not forget the 5,000 American souls that would perish with a direct hit.

On this point, Georgetown University lecturer and former Pentagon insider Phillip Karber observes:

We have the world's strongest navy. Our navy today could probably take on all the other navies in the world and win in a conventional war, including against the Chinese and Russians.  But, the Chinese have been playing [it] smart. They have been developing what's called asymmetric weapons like the anti-ship ballistic missile which may be able to hold our naval fleet hostage.  And that means we will have less and less ability to bring that naval power to bear locally.

It is precisely the asymmetric nature of China’s expanding military arsenal – coupled with its growing technological capabilities to pull off feats like hitting an aircraft carrier at sea – that is causing so much consternation both within the Pentagon and the many countries of Asia that depend on the United States aircraft carrier fleet to defend their interests.

In fact, China’s almost obsessive focus on neutralizing America’s aircraft carrier strike groups aptly highlights a great cultural and geopolitical divide between two nuclear-tipped military superpowers now jockeying for strategic position and increasingly uncomfortable in each other’s midst. 

On one side of this divide is a China forged in the crucible of a Century of Humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.  From this vantage point, China sees its growing arsenal of asymmetric weapons as a purely defensive military buildup designed to execute what it calls a “counter intervention” strategy, the goal of which is simply to protect the Chinese mainland, and particularly the vast wealth along the Chinese coast.

Of course, the United States sees China’s counter-intervention from an entirely different perspective – and even refers to it by a different name.  To US military analysts, China is practicing a strategy of “anti-access, area denial” that is primarily offensive, rather than defensive, in nature.  This strategy is also highly escalatory in that it both seeks to drive US forces out of Asian waters (the area denial component) and then to ensure those forces don’t come back (the anti-access piece).