Fearing that China will deploy hypersonic weapons to sink ships in the Pacific, the US Navy is moving ahead with a plan to arm some of its ships with Patriot interceptor missiles, Reuters reported, citing two senior Pentagon officials. This is what Radio China says.
According to the information, a representative of the US defense industry has confirmed that the placement of highly flexible Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) interceptors, used primarily by land forces, on board ships is due to advances in Chinese missile technology , including the use of highly maneuverable hypersonic weapons. The integration of the missiles, made by Lockheed Martin, with the air defenses of ships comes amid simmering tensions in the Indo-Pacific region amid the rapid modernization of China’s military, Reuters said.
Commenting on this, Zhang Junshe, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times that in order to ensure absolute military superiority against its opponents, the US military has put a lot of effort into developing various anti-missile defense and attack systems in recent years. “Earlier, the US military acted to transfer the Tomahawk cruise missile system to land, improving its missile strike capabilities against other countries from there. It is now trying to deploy land-based missile systems at sea to improve its respective defense capabilities,” Zhang says.
However, he is adamant that “if the United States does not provoke a war, no country will take the initiative to strike American ships.” “This precisely demonstrates that the US military uses the so-called threat of the development of Chinese missile technology as a justification for continuously improving its land, sea and air missile strike capabilities, seeking absolute military superiority,” the expert believes.
He said the US Navy’s plan to arm some of its ships with Patriot interceptor missiles meant some technical issues had to be worked out first. Currently, the main US warships are the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which primarily use the Aegis combat system to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles at sea using the Standard Missile-3. “These two missile systems differ in terms of their operational command and control systems, fire control radar systems and missile launchers,” the expert added.