A US Navy supercarrier in the middle of a Chinese desert

The Chinese military has built a huge target on a desert firing range for its latest anti-ship ballistic missiles which is in the shape of the US Navy’s latest Gerald R Ford-class aircraft carrier, new satellite images have revealed. Two other targets shaped like Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers have also been spotted at the same site as the full-scale carrier constructed in the Ruoqiang area of Xinjiang region in northwest China. The carrier has been built on a rail line, according to the satellite images provided by Maxar, a Colorado-based American space technology company and published by the US Naval Institute. The new complex in the Taklamakan desert is believed to have been built to test China’s “carrier killer”, the Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D), a medium-range, road-mobile anti-ship ballistic missile. The presence of a mock-up US carrier and two warships suggests the Chinese military has deliberately constructed the equivalent of a US carrier strike group for target practice. The disclosure comes at a time when tensions have increased in the region because of China’s aggressive naval and air actions close to Taiwan. President Biden recently said the US would come to Taiwan’s military aid if Beijing invaded the self-governing island. China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has for years been developing a strategy to deny access to US carrier groups in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific by building up its stock of anti-ship ballistic missiles. The carrier target does not include the full superstructure of a Ford-class warship. There is no sign of the carrier’s flight control island. But the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have vertical poles to give an impression of the ship’s superstructure. The institute reported that the rail-mobile carrier target complex was first built between March and April, 2019 but later dismantled. The latest satellite images show that the site was brought back into operational use in September and completed last month. Last week the Pentagon revealed in its annual report on China’s military that the PLA rocket force fired its first live carrier killer in July 2019. The Pentagon said six DF-21D missiles had been launched into the waters north of the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Last year China fired anti-ship ballistic missiles against a moving target in the South China Sea for the first time, the Pentagon said. China has built US carrier mock-ups in the desert before for target practice. But they were unsophisticated slabs of concrete approximately the size of an aircraft carrier. The latest targets are far more closely designed to represent a real US Navy carrier. US aircraft carrier strike groups make regular appearances in the South China Sea region to demonstrate the right to operate in international waters. In July last year two Nimitz-class carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz, operated together in the South China Sea. Last year Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launched missiles at a mock aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz during naval war games. After a barrage of missiles, the fake carrier listed to one side with nearly half of the flight deck submerged.