The United States Navy’s newest and largest (not to mention most expensive) warship is now on the way home from an extended deployment to the Mediterranean. The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), lead vessel of a new class of nuclear-powered supercarriers, transited the Strait of Gibraltar last Friday after spending 204 days in the Mediterranean Sea as part of an eight-month deployment – which had been extended three times following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The warship is expected to return to her homeport of Norfolk, VA.
However, even as the supercarrier crosses the Atlantic, the Chinese military has reportedly been determining how the vessel could be targeted in a conflict. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reportedly construction a target vessel mockup in a remote desert region of Western china.
The two-dimensional fabric target – which matches precisely the flattop’s unique geometry – was spotted by U.S.-based satellite company Planet Labs on January 1. According to TheDrive, several masts could be seen around the target – and there has been speculation those could be radar reflectors, which could mimic the real ship’s full radar signature but could also be topped with antennas or other equipment that is used during tests.
China is known to possess two anti-ship ballistic missiles, the “carrier-killer” DF-21D and DF-26, and it is possible that the target is being employed to develop remote-sensing and targeting systems for these missiles or other devices.
Carriers in the Desert
This is not the first time that satellites have spotted such fairly sophisticated targets of American warships in the region. In 2021, Colorado-based Maxar Technologies photographed similar arrangements at the location in the Taklaman Desert, to the west of Ruoquiang, Xinjiang Province.
The targets highlight the interest from Beijing in honing technology that could be used to counter the U.S. Navy’s warships. Construction of the previous targets appears to have begun around March/April 2019 and was “substantially complete by early October” 2021.
However, there have been reports that the site of the naval targets is near a former target range that China that had been used to test early versions of its so-called carrier killer DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile in 2013. During those PLA claimed it “successfully sunk” a carrier in a war game.
China has conducted the testing of anti-ship weapons since at least 2003, when it first constructed a large concrete pad that was roughly the size of a carrier at another site. That slab, which is part of the Shuangchengzi missile test range, has reportedly been used in missile tests many times and it has been frequently repaired. The new site in the Taklamakan desert is 600 miles away but according to a 2021 USNI News report is much more evolved. The newer ship targets are closer approximations of the vessels that they are supposed to represent.
There have been at least a single stationary aircraft carrier target, two stationary destroyers and notably one aircraft carrier attached to a rail, which indicates that it was designed for moving target practice. The current mock-ups are reported to be quite advanced, and the carrier target appears to be a flat surface but with aircraft lifts, weapons sponsons and other details, while the destroyer targets include funnels and weapons systems that closely mimic an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
Target Acquisition
While there has been speculation that the Chinese are conducting practice runs on U.S. carriers, some experts have noted that the BF-21 would have a harder time hitting a target in the ocean than in the Gobi Desert.
“The thing to keep in mind is that, in order for China to successfully attack a U.S. navy ship with a ballistic missile,” defense analyst Roger Cliff told The Diplomat at the time of those 2013 test, “it must first detect the ship, identify it as a U.S. warship of a type that it wishes to attack … [then] over-the-horizon radars used to detect ships can be jammed, spoofed, or destroyed; smoke and other obscurants can be deployed … and when the missile locks on to the target its seeker can be jammed or spoofed.”
Chinese Threat Taken Seriously
The potential of China’s hypersonic weapons as a potential “carrier killer” has been a grave concern for the U.S. military. In the fall of 2021, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the threat needs to be taken seriously following a test of a high-speed system earlier that year.
“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system,” Milley told Bloomberg TV. At the time, the U.S. – which is also working on hypersonic weapons – had not conducted a hypersonic weapon test of the sort that China had achieved.
“I think I saw in some of the newspapers, they used the term Sputnik moment,” he added. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. So it’s a very significant technological event that occurred, or test that occurred, by the Chinese. And it has all of our attention.”
Big Ship But a Big Target?
Larger in size than the Nimitz-class carriers, USS Gerald R. Ford can operate with a smaller crew thanks to a greater emphasis on automation. The warship will also see a reduction in maintenance requirements, as well as a crew workload reduction.
The flattop is capable of carrying upwards of 90 of the United States Navy’s most advanced aircraft, and that will include the F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft and MH-60R/S helicopter as well as unmanned air and combat vehicles. In addition, Ford will also be able to recover and launch various Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) aircraft flown by the United States Marine Corps including the F-35B Lightning II.
It would be a tempting target for an adversary in wartime – and while a moving warship might be difficult to hit, it appears that Beijing is trying to hone its skills.
