"In Chinas Sight: A new missile threatens the U.S. Navys biggest warships---and stability in the Pacific." is a long report of this weeks TIME.  The story reveals how have Chinas DF-021D missiles(DF stands for Dong Feng, 東風) become the biggest concern to the U.S. mighty carriers, the new Ford class in the vast Pacific Ocean.  I did read many a relevant report about DF-021D in Chinese websites, including in that popular "天下縱橫談", but this is the very first time that I saw it reported on a mainstream non-military magazine from US perspectives.  I hope you could also read it if you are interested in.  Here I would like to recpitulate the main points that the report was trying to convey. 

TIME attributes the realization of DF-021D has been the humiliation that China suffered from the inicident of 95/96 when she launched missiles to the northern and southern sea of Taiwan, warning that Jap Li not to seek Taidu by the so-called universal suffrage on Taiwans presidential election.  Then U.S. dispatched two carriers to "peer" in Chinese windows from the seas, and so China pulled back.  Thanks to the stupidities Li made, which spurred Mainland on speeding up her renovations to the military technologies. (She would have upgraded her weapons anyway regardless there was such a stimulus.) 

The DF-021D could hold U.S. carriers at bay by keeping them beyond the fleets F-18 warplanes( even the attack bombers F-35) unrefueld range.  The truck-carried missles could fly as far as 900 miles, while the U.S. most advanced planes could only fly 700 miles unrefueled.  That means U.S. carrier fleets must stay at least 1,000 miles away from Chinas coast in case a Sino-American conflict (or a war) is taken place.  But do the missiles work?  Are they able to hit a moving target?  The U.S. Navy says it "believes China has harnessed the space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control structure and ground processing capabilities" that make the missile work.  Besides, China had already proved that she was able to use the similiar missile in destroying an obsolete weather satelite that was orbiting the planet, which speed was much faster than the carrier at a full speed of 30 knots on the sea. 

Cant U.S. fleets defend themselves by hitting down those misslies whenever necessary?  Well, its a concept of asymmetric warfare.  The cost of a DF-21D, including its launcher on a truck, is at most $11 million, while a future Ford-class carrier will cost $13.5 billion, let alone the likewise expensive planes it carries.  Therefore, China could produce 1,227 DF-21D missiles at the cost of a single U.S. Ford-class aircraft carrier.  How can the carrier defend drove of sophisticated missiles up from skies?  So, according to the magazine, the U.S. Navy urges that a smaller but faster fleet be built up to replace the war platform which belongs to 20th century.  

I dont care what U.S. think about; I just care about what the islanders on Taiwan would think about.  All I can say is: "Wake up and get real, the advocates to Taidu or Dutai, dont you just bank on your Big Brother because it cant protect you any longer."