China conducts sucessful anti-missile test

[frigidmagi]

Timesonline

[quote]China has carried out a successful test of new technology to destroy missiles in mid-air, just days after the United States angered Beijing by selling Patriot missiles to Taiwan.

The Foreign Ministry repeated Beijing’s long-held claim that yet another display of the growing military capability of the People’s Liberation Army was not aimed at any particular country.

It said China had used “ground-based mid-course missile interception technology" but did not specify whether a missile had been destroyed.

"The test has achieved the expected objective. The test is defensive in nature and is not targeted at any country," state media quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying.

Although such tests take time to set up, it seemed likely that the timing was linked to China’s anger at last week’s announcement of the sale of US weaponry to Taiwan, including PAC-3 air defence missiles.

These sales are driven by threats from China to use force to bring the island back under its control and which are backed up by an estimated 1,300 Chinese ballistic missiles positioned along the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan declared independence from China in 1949 but Beijing continues to regard the self-governing island as part of its territory. China has warned of a disruption in ties with Washington if the sale goes ahead, but has not said what specific actions it would take.

In Washington, the US Defence Department said it had received no advance notice of the test but the United States did not consider the test related to US arms sales to Taiwan.

Major Maureen Schumann, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said: “We detected two geographically separated missile launch events with an exo-atmospheric collision also being observed by space-based sensors.â€