Amid South China Sea row, China flaunts cruise missile power

In the midst of developing row with the US over questioned South China Sea where American boats challenged China’s claims, Chinese military has sent its most recent hostile to ship cruise missile which specialists say can form a capable protection line at sea.

“The deployment of the latest YJ-18, together with the YJ-12 and YJ-100, has enabled the Navy to deter any foreign navies from approaching its defence areas,” state-run China Daily quoted unnamed strategy researcher in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as saying.

Amid South China Sea row, China flaunts cruise missile power

“Few countries have developed advanced anti-ship missiles over the past decade as China has done,” he said.

Executive of the PLA Navy’s Expert Consultation Committee, Yin Zhuo, told China Central Television that nobody has succeeded in blocking an ocean skimming rocket regardless of the fact that it is flying at a subsonic pace, so bringing down a rocket flying at Mach 3 will be extremely troublesome.

“Compared with anti-ship ballistic missiles, the YJ-18 and YJ-12 will prove to be more useful, because even though ballistic missiles have a longer range and larger destructive power, their launch preparations are more complicated and their use is more likely to escalate a conflict,” the researcher was quoted as saying by the report.

Anti-ship cruise missiles by contrast like the YJ-18 are more defensive in nature and easy to use, the researcher said, revealing that China has become one of the top developers of anti-ship cruise missiles globally.

Editor-in-chief of Modern Ships magazine, Cui Yiliang, said the YJ-18 represents the development trend of next-generation anti-ship cruise missile.

It has good flight control and high intelligence and can perform sophisticated manoeuvres to avoid detection and interception.