Pentagon Outranged by Chinese Anti-Ship Missiles, Scrambles to Save Face

• The DF-21 can be armed with a nuclear warhead (upto 300kton).
  –
  United States Naval Institute in 2009 stated that such a warhead would be large enough to destroy an aircraft carrier in one hit and that there was “currently … no defense against it” if it worked as theorized.^[19]
  – Quote Wikipedia
  –
• Pentagon Outranged by Chinese Anti-Ship Missiles, Scrambles to Save Face
  by http://sputniknews.com/  
  Desperate to compete with China’s long-range anti-ship missiles, the US Navy is considering one of two options: forge ahead with the expensive, but state-of-the-art LRASM, or upgrade the Cold War-era Tomahawk, a missile never intended for naval warfare. 
  –
  Beijing unveiled its DF-21D Dong Feng “carrier killer” missile in 2014. Rumored to be capable of traveling at Mach 10 – or ten times the speed of sound – with an effective range of 1,200 miles, the Navy has expressed concern that the weapon could pose a major threat to US aircraft carriers in the event of conflict.
  –
  On Wednesday, US Deputy Chief of Naval Operations Joseph Aucoin outlined the Pentagon’s plan for how best to counter the Dong Feng.
  –
  One option is the Tomahawk missile. Introduced in the 1970s, that weapon is now produced by US defense contracting firm Raytheon. While it has proven remarkably reliable during its nearly 40 years of service, much of the Tomahawk’s success is based on stationary, land-based targets.
  –
  Except for a single model now out of service, the Tomahawk is not designed for mobile, floating targets, and would have to receive a significant upgrade before they could be any match against the Chinese Navy.
  –
  The other option is Lockheed Martin’s Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), which the Pentagon’s research arm DARPA called “a leap ahead in US surface warfare capability.” The LRASM boasts the capability of operating either independently or with remote guidance, and can survive GPS jamming.
  –
  read more.

end