‘INTENSIFY’: China’s stunning response to Australia, US missile act

“Australia has not only already been a tool of the US Indo-Pacific strategy, but is increasingly becoming both a strategic and tactical weapon for Washington across multiple aspects,” East China Normal University Australia analyst Chen Hong told the Beijing-controlled South China Morning Post.

The accusation comes after the US Army deployed its experimental new Dark Eagle Long Range Hypersonic Weapon outside the continental US for the first time.

Two mobile missile launchers were carried by heavy lift aircraft to the Northern Territory and then moved to undisclosed locations by road as part of Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 manoeuvres in recent weeks.

Shanghai Fudan University strategist Xin Qiang told the SCMP the missile’s deployment to the multinational exercise was a “flexing of military muscle”.

“I think China will certainly maintain a high level of alertness and attention to this,” Mr Xin said. “The military and security rivalry or competition between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific is likely to further intensify.”

Australia’s Talisman Sabre exercise is a biennial event.

This year, it drew together 40,000 soldiers, sailors and aircrew from 19 nations in a range of exercises designed to improve interoperability and military preparedness.

It kicked off on July 13, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was visiting China.

‘Mine’s bigger than yours’

Retired People’s Liberation Army senior colonel and prolific media commentator Zhou Bo told the SCMP that the symbolic presence of the new Dark Eagle LRHW missile in Australia had not been missed by Beijing.

The missile is capable of reaching Chinese-occupied territory from the Northern Territory.

A June US Congressional Research Service report published last month says the truck-trailer-based system has a range of 2800km and can travel faster than Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound, or 6170km/h).

That means it could reach Beijing’s illegal South China Sea island fortresses from Australia in less than 30 minutes.

But Mr Zhou, now part of Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, dismissed the missile’s significance.

He told the SCMP that China has had better hypersonic missiles for longer.

“In terms of weapons comparison, it’s not a case of them having something we don’t,” he said.

“What we have may even be better than theirs.”

He pointed to the DF-17 hypersonic missile as having similar performance to the Dark Eagle. It has been in service since 2019.

Mr Zhou added that the newer DF-27 could fly three times as far.

Dark Eagle is expected to formally enter US Army service by the end of this year. It’s one of the first operational outcomes of a decades-long race to catch up with Beijing’s and Russia’s hypersonic advances.

 

A US Army Dark Eagle unit, called a battery, is made up of four launchers carrying a total of eight missiles. These are supported by command and engineering vehicles.

The high speed of the missiles is hoped to make them capable of evading the heavy missile, gun and laser defences on China’s island fortress stepping stones between Vietnam and the Philippines.

 

 

Dark Eagle is already three years late after a series of cost blowouts, testing delays and technical difficulties.

But the US Army said in a recent press release that the Talisman Sabre deployment had “validated” its capabilities, including that of communicating with its command centre while travelling over the horizon at hypersonic speeds.

“The Dark Eagle is truly ready to go,” Dark Eagle Bravo Battery commander Captain Jennifer Lee said in an army statement.

Wedge diplomacy

The deployment of Dark Eagle to Australia during the Prime Minister’s visit to Beijing has drawn the Chinese Communist Party’s ire.

“What makes us alert and concerned is that there seems to be an increasingly evident rift or divergence between Canberra’s diplomatic and military spheres,” Mr Chen told the SCMP.

The Albanese Government says it is pursuing a policy of engagement with China, while at the same time addressing increasing security tensions in South East Asia.

“I’m afraid that … the main intention of the US (is) to exert a certain deterrence against China, to demonstrate the unity and interoperability of its alliances, as well as the credibility of its stated security commitment to the region – to project this posture and attitude,” Mr Xin said.

 

Several participants in the Talisman Sabre exercise are concerned for their own security in the face of Beijing’s aggressive territorial claims.

Japan is experiencing increasingly frequent Chinese military and civil incursions into the waters around its Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

And the Philippines is engaged in an almost daily struggle to maintain its sovereignty and access to parts of the Spratly Islands, a few hundred kilometres off its shores.

And Australia, which has been part of an international policing effort in the South China Sea since the end of World War II, has had several dangerous encounters with Chinese aircraft and warships there in recent years.

Beijing claims ownership of the entire East and South China Seas, despite UN treaties dividing the waters according to agreed formulas between their coastal states.

China now has the world’s largest navy, a modern and growing air force, and an arsenal of advanced missiles designed to attack US aircraft carrier battle groups.

 

 

In response, the US has been responding to calls by its allies – Japan, the Philippines and Australia – to strengthen its own defensive posture along what is dubbed the First Island Chain.

This string of islands between Japan and Papua New Guinea is what Beijing has declared to be its primary sphere of influence.

Beijing reacted angrily earlier this year when the Philippines invited US anti-ship missile batteries to exercise on its shores.

Japan’s plans to buy similar missiles have also been met with ire.

It will conduct a joint war game with the US in September, designed to test allied abilities to defend its remote Sakishima Islands from air and sea attack.

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social