Because cruise missiles are compact and have limited support requirements, ground-based platforms can be highly mobile, contributing to prelaunch survivability. They may also be placed in canisters for extended deployments in harsh environments. Modern cruise missiles offer land, sea, and air launch options, allowing a “two-stage” form of delivery that extends the already substantial range of the missiles themselves. Due to their superior aerodynamic flight stability compared to ballistic missiles, cruise missiles-by conservative estimates-enlarge the lethal area for biological attacks by a factor of 10.
Although China appears heavily focused on precision conventional delivery, cruise missiles could also be employed to deliver nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Cruise missiles are versatile military tools due to their potential use for precision conventional strike missions and wide range of employment options.
Military ValueĬhinese writers rightly recognize cruise missiles’ numerous advantages. China’s growing arsenal of cruise missiles and the delivery platforms and C4ISR systems necessary to employ them pose new defense and nonproliferation challenges for the United States and its regional partners. The PLA has sought to acquire asymmetric “assassin’s mace” technologies and systems to overcome a superior adversary and couple them to the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems necessary for swift and precise execution of short-duration, high-intensity wars.Ī key element of the PLA’s investment in antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities is the development and deployment of large numbers of highly accurate antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) and land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs) on a range of ground, naval, and air platforms. Beijing is now broadening this focus to its Near Seas (Yellow, East, and South China seas) more generally. YJ-62 antiship cruise missile launched by transporter erector launcher (Courtesy Sino Defense) OverviewĬhina’s military modernization is focused on building modern ground, naval, air, and missile forces capable of fighting and winning local wars under “informatized conditions.” The principal planning scenario has been a military campaign against Taiwan, which would require the PLA to deter or defeat U.S. The result is a study whose details must be treated with caution, but whose larger findings are likely to hold. The authors drew on their combined technical, arms control, and Chinese analysis experience to compare and assess information for reliability. Government reports, analyses by scholars and think tanks, and online databases. These Chinese sources were supplemented with a wide variety of English-language sources, including-in descending level of demonstrated authority-U.S.
#Carrier command 2 cruise missile full
To be accessible to a general audience, this article includes only a fraction of the several hundred citations found in the full study, together with several related sources. In descending level of demonstrated authority, these Chinese sources include PLA doctrinal publications (for example, Science of Campaigns) describing how cruise missiles might be used in operational scenarios specialized technical analyses ( Winged Missiles Journal) from civilian and military institutes detailing many specific aspects of such weapons and their supporting infrastructure didactic PLA discussions ( Modern Navy and People’s Navy) generalist deliberations on the development trajectory and operational use of cruise missiles ( Naval and Merchant Ships and Modern Ships) and unattributed speculation on a variety of Web sites. More than 1,000 discrete Chinese-language sources were considered several hundred have been incorporated in some form. This article draws on findings from a multiyear comprehensive study of Chinese cruise missiles based exclusively on open sources. This article surveys PRC cruise missile programs and assesses their implications for broader People’s Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities, especially in a Taiwan scenario. The numerous, increasingly advanced cruise missiles being developed and deployed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have largely flown under the public’s radar.
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