China’s Defense Ministry recently praised the People’s Liberation Army’s development of hypersonic missiles that can effectively attack U.S. aircraft carriers.
The ministry commented on a report in The Washington Times’ Inside the Ring column about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s belief that Beijing’s hypersonic missiles can knock out U.S. aircraft carriers within the first 20 minutes of a conflict.
Senior Col. Zhang Xiaogang, a ministry spokesman, was asked about the April 16 column. He praised PLA hypersonic missile deployment.
Mr. Hegseth’s comments, he said, reflect efforts by the U.S. to inflate Chinese military threats.
“We have a sober understanding of the state of our development,” Col. Zhang said. “We hope the U.S. side will break away from persecution mania and stop using others as excuses.”
The spokesman said “some individuals” in the U.S. view the Chinese military with bias and are hyping the China military threat.
Col. Zhang then sought to exploit past Pentagon eagerness for military exchanges with the PLA. He said hawkish American views are an obstacle to military-to-military engagement between the U.S. and China.
“Nonconflict, nonconfrontation and peaceful coexistence is in the most fundamental interests of both China and the U.S. and meets the common expectation of people across the world,” he said.
The Pentagon’s most recent annual report on the Chinese military, published in December, stated that in 2023, “the PLA largely denied, cancelled, and ignored recurring bilateral engagements.”
Some exchanges resumed after the November 2023 summit between then-President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Hegseth stated in a November interview — months before becoming defense secretary — that the Chinese military’s ultra-high-speed maneuvering missiles are a key element of forces being built specifically to target the American military.
“So if our whole power projection platform is aircraft carriers and the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe. And, yeah, we have a nuclear triad and all that, but [carriers are] a big part of it. And if 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?” he said.
Aircraft carriers currently have limited defenses against Chinese hypersonic missiles. Anti-missile interceptors are deployed with carrier group destroyer escorts.
China has deployed two hypersonic missile systems: The DF-17 medium-range missile can be armed with a hypersonic glide vehicle, and the 5,000-mile-range DF-27 also can be armed with a hypersonic warhead.
The Pentagon is behind schedule in developing several types of hypersonic missiles in response to Chinese and Russian high-speed maneuvering missiles.
