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US admiral calls China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles a ‘destabilising effort’ that may not win a war
- Vice Admiral Jeffrey Trussler says United States is closely watching the PLA’s missile programme
- He hopes ‘they just keep pouring money into that type of thing’ because it may not help win a conflict
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A senior US military official said China was “pouring a lot of money” into anti-ship ballistic missiles but it may not help the People’s Liberation Army win a conflict between the two nations.
Vice Admiral Jeffrey Trussler, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, said the US was closely monitoring China’s missile programme, calling it an effort to destabilise the region.
“I’m not going to get [into] much more detail of what we know and don’t know about it,” he said at a virtual event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance on Wednesday, according to military website USNI News.
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“But they’re pouring a lot of money in the ability to basically rim their coast in the South China Sea with anti-ship missile capability,” Trussler said. “It’s a destabilising effort in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, all those areas. When their claims of some of these contested islands – they’re militarising those areas.”
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The South China Morning Post reported in August that the PLA had test-fired a DF-26B missile and a DF-21D “aircraft carrier killer” into an area between Hainan Island and the disputed Paracel archipelago in the South China Sea, citing a source close to the Chinese military.
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