How Will China’s DF-27 Long-Range Missile Reshape the Pacific?

James Holmes

Source Link

There is much we still do not know about the DF-27 missile—but it is worth examining the consequences for the US Navy if the Pentagon’s claims are taken at face value.

All respect to my colleague and friend Professor Andrew Erickson, but China’s DF-27 antiship ballistic missile does not represent “a new form of naval force,” as he wrote in USNI News last month. It is intimately familiar, and more ominous for all that. It represents the latest in a centuries-old form of naval force approaching its apex potential thanks to advances in sensor, computer, and weapons technology backed by the willpower and resources of a prosperous, ambitious, and increasingly domineering maritime power. Everything old is new again.