POSTED
RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
It has long been only a matter of time
until an effective anti-carrier missile is developed.
The Chinese - with their intellectual gift
for mathematics, engineering, and computers now financed by a successful
economy - have long been good candidates for coming up with it.
After all, they have already, in a short
space of time, come up with a working satellite-killer and an advanced
thermonuclear warhead comparable to the American W-88.
And, not very long ago, during some
American naval exercises in the Southwest seas, a brilliant Chinese submarine
commander managed to surface his boat right in the middle of America's ships,
America's hugely expensive and complex electro-magnetic "umbrella"
having failed to detect his boat.
The American Navy was hugely embarrassed
and rather shaken by this feat, the result of a new coating and other
technologies for Chinese submarines.
I think these events remarkable for a
country which spends about 15% of what America spends every year on its
military.
There is nothing unsettling about it.
Indeed, I think but am not sure the Russian
"sunburn" missile, which spirals unpredictably as it homes in at
supersonic speeds, may be capable of sinking a capital ship despite its
radar-guided Gatling-gun defenses.
The United States for too long has
arrogantly roamed the world's seas with its aircraft carriers, busy
intimidating others, carrying on pointless wars and interventions.
A world of multiple powers will be a much
healthier one.
In the way international affairs work,
having a single unstoppable super-power is just as unhealthy as having a tyrant
running a country.
America itself has suffered seriously in
its democratic values and human rights from the decaying effects of its
monstrous military-industrial complex.
Remember, America spends more on its
military than all other nations on earth combined, and it has done so for a
long time.
Remember, that since WWII, America has
launched an almost continuous series of ugly wars and invasions and
interventions, almost all of them pointless and none of them serving the
interests of democracy and human rights. Three million dead in Vietnam, a
million dead in Cambodia (destabilized by American intervention), a million
dead in Iraq, plus countless lesser savage tolls.
And remember, too, that America is the
world's largest arms merchant, spreading death for profit across the face of
the planet.
And, last, remember what Lord Acton said
about absolute power.
Meanwhile, despite the fears constantly
stirred up by our press and the American government, China has kept to its own
sphere and it has not started any wars.
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A link to a reprinted chapter of my book of
three years ago may be of interest.
See "China's New Weapons" at:
http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/china%E2%80%99s-new-weapons/
______________________
China's new DF21-D anti-ship missile is a
ballistic missile, as opposed to Sunburn which is a ramjet cruise missile which
travels about 3 times the speed of sound. The DF21-D is launched much like an
ICBM to arch over a region of sea. Its sensors detect enemy ships, and the
warhead's course is altered as needed from its ballistic arch to rain down on a
target at hypersonic speeds, the kinetic energy alone of such a strike being
adequate to disable a capital ship. This missile is being installed along the
coast of China opposite Taiwan to put American carriers at serious risk should
they be used to defend Taiwan. The combination of these two anti-ship missiles
may well render aircraft carriers obsolete in parts of the world.
