Aviation Week:
China may be able to take out an American aircraft carrier with its feared DF-21 antiship ballistic missile (ASBM) without even taking a shot.
For years the U.S. Navy has been warning of the potential of the DF-21 to strike a carrier as part of the justification for updating the systems and networks of shielding that protect the country’s most visible – and some say most vulnerable – military icons.
The Navy brass did a good job making its case. Maybe too good. Now some powerful people in DC are looking to reduce the fleet by a carrier or two in the belief that the DF-21 will make it too dangerous for the ships even to get close to Chinese territorial waters. Indeed, the thinking goes, the Navy won’t even be willing to risk a multibillion-dollar carrier and its air wing to get close enough to China to be operationally, tactically or strategically effective.
This would be Navy failure in an anti-access aerial denial (A2AD) scenario writ large. Cutting out a carrier from the shipbuilding or overhaul plan because of such concerns would strike at the heart of the nation’s forward-presence strategy, especially in the great maritime expanses of the Asia-Pacific.
The Navy is now doing a carrier study for lawmakers to analyze the cost and operations for the biggest U.S. ships. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, says he wants to look hard at carriers and their air wings…
