The US Navy has a new Chinese weapon to fear that could change the strategic picture in the South Pacific.
The Chinese Air Force (PLAAF) would have modified a small number of strategic H-6 bombers to make them suitable for carrying a new air-to-surface missile, whose main function should be the anti-ship function.
The new Chinese weapon, probably a variant of the DF-21D ballistic missile, could represent a serious danger to the naval units of the U.S. XNUMXth Fleet (in particular the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan), which operates in the Western Pacific, as the Beijing regime has never hidden from considering the island of Taiwan as its province and which, sooner or later, will return to its political control.
The new version of the strategic bomber, called H-6N, appeared for the first time during the military parade in Beijing, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
The main modification to the bomber concerns the creation of a space under the fuselage for the housing of the new missile.
The DF-21D is about 10 meters long and weighs 14.500 kg, has a range of about 1.700 km with a head of 1.200 kg.
Pentagon analysts believe that at least four H-6Ns have been modified and assigned to a bomber brigade of a strategic command of the PLAAF, created on an artificial atoll in the South China Sea.
In recent years, the Chinese have dredged several km of coral reef in the Paracelsus Islands in order to create military outposts to better control access and transit to the South China Sea.
Photo: US Navy
