Chinese Naval Might

WSJ’s Nathan Hodge reports on a new fleet of Chinese ballistic missiles that can strike warships nearly 2,000 miles offshore and are intended to counter U.S. warships.

China Takes Aim at U.S. Naval Might

Wall Street Journal| By Julian E. Barnes in Washington, Nathan Hodge in Newport News, Va., and Jeremy Page in Beijing

The USS Gerald R. Ford was supposed to help secure another half century of American naval supremacy. The hulking aircraft carrier taking shape in a dry dock in Newport News, Va., is designed to carry a crew of 4,660 and a formidable arsenal of aircraft and weapons.

But an unforeseen problem cropped up between blueprint and expected delivery in 2015: China is building a new class of ballistic missiles designed to arc through the stratosphere and explode onto the deck of a U.S. carrier, killing sailors and crippling its flight deck.

Since 1945, the U.S. has ruled the waters of the western Pacific, thanks in large part to a fleet of 97,000-ton carriers—each one “4.5 acres of mobile, sovereign U.S. territory,” as the Navy puts it. For nearly all of those years, China had…….[access full article]