The U.S military has several arrows in its quiver should it need to sink China’s third and newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian.
The U. S military has several arrows in its quiver should it need to sink China’s third and newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, which launched on Friday. China is boasting that the Fujian was built with the latest technology, which reportedly includes the same type of electromagnetic catapult that the U.S. Navy struggled to get to work on its newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. The launch of the Fujian comes shortly after China’s foreign ministry spokesman claimed recently that the Taiwan Strait belongs to China and he argued there is no legal basis to call the strait “international waters.” Since U.S. warships occasionally transit the Taiwan Strait, a confrontation between the U.S. and Chinese navies is always a possibility. But the fact that the Fujian comes equipped with the latest bells and whistles does not make it immune from attacks from above and below the water. The Russians learned this lesson the hard way when their cruiser Moskva, the flagship of their Black Sea Fleet, sank after being hit by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles. Unless the Fujian features “a super-secret, amazing ship defense capability,” it will be just as vulnerable to the weapons that the U.S. military can bring to bear on the other ships in the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s fleet, said retired Marine Lt. Col. Dakota Wood, a defense expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.
“In general terms: New aircraft carrier, old aircraft carrier, it’s still an aircraft carrier,” Wood told Task & Purpose. “It’s a ship that floats in the water and is subject to being targeted by maritime patrol aircraft with anti-ship cruise missiles or a submarine.”
The U.S. Navy’s arsenal of anti-ship missiles includes the Harpoon, a sea-skimming cruise missile guided by the Global Positioning System that can be launched by ships as well as Navy and Air Force aircraft.
