As reported Tuesday by the United States Naval Institute, reports are surfacing that the Chinese military has developed a one-shot/one-kill anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) capable of destroying an aircraft carrier at a range of 2,000 kilometers. Building on information contained in Chinese blog posts found by the writers at Information Dissemination, there is cause to believe that this weapon was built to directly challenge what Chinese sees as US incursion in the South China Sea.  According to the US Naval Institute article:

The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces.

The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.

The Chinese blog entry that is the source for Information Dissemination‘s own post references the US Navy’s sailing into the Taiwan Strait in 1996 as one impetus for this weapon’s development.  The presence of Dong Feng 21 installations guarding the South China Sea would be destabilizing to a region already wracked with subsurface tension in the wake of recent incidents like the harassment of US naval vessels by Chinese ships.  Taiwan, as always, remains a fulcrum of Chinese-American difficulties, and the reduced ability for US warships to patrol the international waters of the South China Sea would almost certainly effect future decisions.

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