NEW YORK, Aug 15 (Reuters): The US Navy's deployment of new extremely long-range air-to-air missiles in the Indo-Pacific could erase China's advantage in aerial reach, experts say, part of an intensifying focus on projecting power amid high tensions in the region.
The AIM-174B, developed from the readily available Raytheon SM-6 air defence missile, is the longest-range such missile the United States has ever fielded and was officially acknowledged in July.
It has three key advantages: it can fly several times farther than the next-best US option, the AIM-120; it does not require new production lines; and it is compatible with the aircraft of at least one ally, Australia.
Crucially, a weapon such as the AIM-174B, which can attack aerial targets as far away as 400 km (250 miles), outranges China's PL-15 missile, allowing US jets to keep threats farther from aircraft carriers, and safely strike "high-value" Chinese targets, such as command-and-control planes.
"The United States can ensure the safety of their important assets, such as carrier groups, and launch long-range strikes on PLA targets," said Chieh Chung, a researcher at a Taipei-based thinktank, the Association of Strategic Foresight, using an abbreviation for the People's Liberation Army.
The West has not easily been able to do that until now.
The AIM-120, the standard long-range missile for US aircraft, has a maximum range of about 150 km (93 miles), which requires the launching aircraft to fly deeper into contested territory, exposing aircraft carriers to greater danger of anti-ship attacks.
Any type of South China Sea conflict, within the so-called First Island Chain, which runs roughly from Indonesia northeast to the Japanese mainland, means the US Navy would operate within few hundred kilometres of its Chinese adversary.
Supporting Taiwan in an invasion would pull the Navy in even closer.
The AIM-174B changes that equation, keeping PLA carrier-hunting aircraft out of firing range and even endangering their planes attacking Taiwan, Cheih said. That increased the likelihood the United States would get involved in a major conflict in the region, he added.
"The big thing is that it lets the United States push in a little bit further" into the South China Sea during a conflict, said a senior US defence technical analyst, who declined to be identified because the matter is a sensitive one.
"And it's going to potentially change Chinese behaviour because it's going to hold large, slow, unmanoeuvrable aircraft at greater risk."
For decades, the United States' advantage in stealth fighters, first with the F-117 and then with the F-22 and F-35, meant that missiles such as the AIM-120 were all that was needed.
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