The Chinese military is using mock-ups of US aircraft carriers at a weapons-testing range in a remote western desert, new satellite imagery shows, indicating that the People’s Liberation Army is focused on neutralizing a key tool of US power.
Satellite images depict targets in the shape of a carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers at a testing facility in the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang, the news Web site of the US Naval Institute reported.
Both types of vessels are deployed by the US 7th Fleet, which patrols the Western Pacific, including the waters around Taiwan.
Photo: AP
The images were taken last month by Maxar Technologies Inc, a US firm with more than 80 company-built satellites in orbit.
The facility also has two rectangular targets about 75m long that are mounted on rails, Maxar said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News yesterday.
The site is clear to satellites, a sign that Beijing is trying to show Washington what its missile forces can do.
In August last year, the Chinese military executed a coordinated test launch of the “carrier killer” DF-21D missiles into the South China Sea, an action that the former head of the US Indo-Pacific Command US Admiral Phil Davidson later told a Senate panel was intended as an “unmistakable message.”
The DF-21D is central to China’s strategy of deterring military action off its eastern coast by threatening to destroy the major sources of US power projection in the region, its carrier battle groups.
The then-head of Naval Intelligence Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett told reporters in January 2011 that the Pentagon had underestimated the speed at which China developed and was fielding the DF-21D.
China-US ties have been quietly improving in the past few months, but the two nations are sparring over Taiwan and alarm has been growing in Washington over Beijing’s nuclear arsenal.
In a sign of how heated the rhetoric over Taiwan has become, Chinese state media last week had to tame online speculation over a possible war.
The Pentagon has voiced concern that China is expanding its nuclear weapons capabilities more rapidly than previously believed. Many in the US military establishment are also concerned about China’s investments in advanced missile technology, with US General Mark Milley, the top uniformed military officer, on Oct. 27 calling China’s reported hypersonic weapons system tests “very concerning.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS