China has an operational carrier-killer ballistic missile much sooner than expected, said Navy intelligence chief Vice Adm. David Dorsett Wednesday. “I am concerned about the DF-21B ballistic missile,” Dorsett told defense reporters in Washington, D.C. The missile, if fired in salvos of “several” at a time, could find and destroy a “maneuvering target” at long range, he said. He’s not worried about it yet, for while the missile has been tested over land “a sufficient number of times” to prove it works, and has been fielded, it has never been demonstrated—”to our knowledge”—operationally over water, using real-world naval sensors and targets, he explained. Whether it could really sink a US aircraft carrier, “we don’t know, and frankly, I’m guessing they don’t know,” said Dorsett. He admitted that, a year ago, the Navy believed “no one had a maneuvering capability” in a ballistic missile. That assessment has now changed, he said.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.