GABRIEL HONRADA
China has ramped up practicing hypersonic missile assaults on US warships and bases, as recent satellite photos of mock targets in Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert show.
Satellite photos released by the US Naval Institute this week show a string of large mock targets on the eastern edge of the desert that simulate warships such as aircraft carriers, destroyers, and naval bases.
The configuration, remote location and impact craters on the targets mean that they were meant for testing China’s hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), an increasingly dangerous threat to US warships in the Pacific.
Among the newer targets discovered were a destroyer and pier mock-ups first built in December last year, 13 kilometers southeast from an aircraft carrier practice target. This February, the base was destroyed in a missile attack exercise and quickly dismantled.
Another target range simulating a pier and warships was discovered 310 kilometers southwest of the original aircraft carrier target. The facility was believed to have been built in December 2018 but had only been discovered now.
The targets also show a high degree of complexity, with the ship and pier targets being made of different materials. The ship targets appear to be made of sheet metal laid on the ground, in a possible effort to simulate radar and infrared signatures.
If so, this indicates China’s sophisticated targeting capabilities, combining radar and infrared guidance systems with sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome countermeasures and distinguish key targets in crowded environments, such as littoral areas, sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) and naval bases.
Chinese mock targets of a US aircraft carrier and destroyer. Photo: Facebook / Daily MailAccording to Lu Li Shih, a former instructor at Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Naval Academy, the newer facility is meant to simulate Suao naval base in Taiwan, with the target ship representing a Kee Lung class destroyer at port.
He also suggested that the target ranges and missile tests were meant to simulate missile strikes on Guam and Taiwan using China’s new YJ-21 hypersonic missile fired from its Type 55 cruisers.
Suao naval base is on the eastern side of Taiwan, which makes it less vulnerable to missile and air attack, in comparison to Keelung naval base which is on the west side of the island. This makes Suao a strategic facility to keep Taiwan’s supply chains open in case of a blockade by China, and thus a key target for Chinese missile strikes in the event of an invasion.
US carrier battlegroups, amphibious ready groups and Guam naval base are also targets for China’s hypersonic missiles. Guam is the first US naval forward operating base outside of the so-called first island chain and a key hub for US naval operations in the Western Pacific, which makes it a priority target for potential Chinese missile strikes.
China has also been improving its space-based targeting abilities, leveraging dual-use technology and resilience through proliferation to counter anti-satellite attacks on its space-based assets.
Last June, a Chinese remote sensing satellite with sophisticated onboard AI tracked in real-time the USS Harry S Truman carrier battlegroup as it performed naval exercises off the coast of Long Island, New York.
When previously tracking US naval drills, China had to relay satellite data to its ground stations for analysis, with results coming when such exercises were over. The Chinese team behind the satellite claimed that it could analyze 200 hi-definition frames per second, a rate that ground-based computers would struggle to match.
China also plans to roll out its onboard satellite AI to its commercial imaging satellites, turning them into potent, low-cost spying and targeting platforms.
By 2025, China plans to launch into orbit a full constellation of 138 Jilin-1 commercial imaging satellites, which will be equipped with onboard AI. Such an upgrade potentially gives them targeting capabilities against key warships and military installations.
The loss of the Russian warships Moskva and Admiral Essen in the ongoing war in Ukraine may have showcased the military value of space-based targeting satellites, as the Starlink satellite constellation has allegedly been used to provide targeting data for Ukraine to hit these naval vessels.
While China has expressed concern about the US militarizing Starlink to gain situational awareness while keeping adversaries in the dark, using it to provide seamless global and around-the-clock reconnaissance and surveillance, it may be mimicking the US with its own StarNet constellation.
A Starlink satellite in low earth orbit. Credit: SpaceX.The planned 10,000-satellite StarNet constellation will feature onboard AI, receive and analyze raw data from traditional remote sensing satellites, identify targets of interest and then pass the information to end users with minimal time delay.
Even though presently there are no effective defenses against hypersonic weapons, the US has been actively working on countermeasures to defeat the threat.
The US has poured significant resources into developing laser weapons to shoot down China’s hypersonic arsenal. Some of the advantages of laser-based missile defense systems include instant hits, pinpoint targeting and scalable laser power depending on mission requirements. While laser defenses are expensive to establish, they have negligible costs per shot once in place.
This February, the US Navy successfully tested a ground-based laser system against a drone, marking the first time it has used an all-electric, directed energy weapon to defeat a target representing a subsonic cruise missile in flight. In addition, Lockheed Martin is also developing the Tactical Airborne Laser System, which would be used to shoot down incoming tactical missiles, for instance air-to-air missiles or surface-to-air missiles.
Apart from laser weapons, the US is also developing the Glide Breaker hypersonic missile interceptor, which aims to shoot down highly maneuverable weapons zooming through the upper atmosphere at speeds of at least Mach 5.
As an alternative to shooting down hypersonic weapons in flight, the US is developing capabilities to go for these weapons’ “kill chain”, namely all the necessary things, people and processes involved in launching missiles and guiding them to their targets.
China flaunts its hypersonic prowess in the Dongfeng-17 hypersonic glider during a military parade in Beijing in a file photo. Photo: AFPSatellites are a potential vulnerability in the hypersonic kill chain, as they are relatively defenseless and cannot be repaired or replaced easily once damaged or destroyed.
While the US announced a self-imposed moratorium on destructive anti-satellite missile tests last month, it is believed that it is developing even more advanced satellite-killing technologies, such as ground-based mobile lasers, radiofrequency jammers, microwave weapons and even hunter-killer satellites.
Satellites themselves can be converted into expedient anti-satellite weapons, as they can be controlled by their operating country to crash into enemy satellites. Last year, the US may have intentionally staged a near-collision between one of its Starlink satellites and China’s Tiangong Space Station. While China mounted a formal diplomatic protest, the US did not respond.
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