The U.S. Navy lacks a target needed to check its defenses against a new Chinese ballistic missile designed to attack multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers, according to the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester.
The Navy has an “immediate need” for a test missile able to replicate the trajectory of the Chinese DF-21D as it descends, Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation, said in his annual report/.../
The Navy told the Senate defense appropriations panel last year that it has made “significant investments in capabilities to counter anti-ship ballistic missiles,” including improvements to the Aegis defense system from Lockheed Martin Corp. that is intended to track and intercept incoming aircraft and missiles.
The Navy may have classified data regarding when China plans to deploy the missile “that make it a lesser concern for the time being or may be working on other” methods to defeat the missile “that it considers more promising” than intercepting it, according to Jan Van Tol, a senior fellow at the Center of Budgetary and Strategic Assessments.
The DF-21D “if it works at some point, is not a ‘ship- killer,’” Van Tol, who commanded three vessels including two in the Pacific during his Navy career, said in an e-mail. “It’s a ‘mission-killer’ -- if not stopped it could do damage that would force the target to withdraw for repairs.”