ORAC,
I think the point is that you can dream up future weapons or extrapolate current capabilities into frightening new ones, but you still have to apply a 'So what?' test to them.
I buy the fact that a nation that is traditionally viewed as a threat by the USA is developing a weapon that is specifically designed to counter balance the USN's footprint in the region by targeting one specific surface combatant.
However, one is an actual capability and the other one isn't.
Even if fielded today we have no idea what the kill chain employed would be or whether the US has a plan for breaking it. As with all kill chains it will be complex and therefore theoretically 'breakable' even if this proves difficult to do.
At the same time, targeting this system would require a kill chain of its own, and simply going by the fact that it appears to be land based with a possible space component - this might be eminently do-able.
Lastly. To actually use this complex, un-developed, not-fielded capability, it has to work, the threat nation needs the will to employ it, a trigger event or set of circumstances to invoke this will - and the ability to live with the consequences.
Simply don't follow the argument to this point myself.
BZ the Chinese though for putting two weapons onto a piece of concrete that could house all the UK's deployable fast jets. Maybe we should put an outline of the pan a Goia on the picture and then scrap the RAF.
