Trung Quốc mua tên lửa chống tàu của Nga

Trung Quốc mua tên lửa chống tàu của Nga

Clubs for Chinese Navy?

Kanwa News Nov 20th, 2002> Kanwa believes that after China's acquisition of CLUB series anti-ship missiles, PLA Navy will become a major force for China to launch effective long range attack against the Taiwan and US ships. The missile's effective range and precision striking power as well as the modes of operation all demonstrate the characteristics of the 21 century maritime weapons, which will enable China to build up further advantage in taking control of the Taiwan Strait waters and containing the involvement of the US forces in the Taiwan China conflict.

Kanwa has eventually confirmed that with the import of KILO 636, China will get the first batch about 50 3M54E (CLUB-S SSM) missiles. Currently, the early stage production of the missiles has already begun.

The combination of 3M54E and KILO 636 will have much better cryptic feature and greater capacity to break through the US Navy and Taiwanese Navy's intercept line than the "Sovremenni"/ 3M80E (SS-N-22) or "LUHAI", Type 051B/YJ8-3 combination. 3M54E is up till now the most powerful subsonic/supersonic dual-system anti-ship missile.

Secondly, the effective range of 3M54E is 220km, far above the ranges of any other ship-to-ship cruise missiles currently in service in the Chinese Navy. Kanwa has learned that China's real intent is to outfit only upgraded version of 3M80E missiles on the newly purchased "Sovremenni".

Now it can be understood that the reason why China did not follow India's step to install 3M54E1 CLUB-N on the destroyers is that China has already purchased 3M54E CLUB-S missiles for the KILO 636 that have the capability to launch supersonic attacks. The main consideration was possibly as follows. Although 3M54E1 SSM (300km range) has much longer range, it adopts the subsonic system. In the war against Taiwan, the mission of long range subsonic missile attacks can be completed by launching land to ship long range subsonic anti-ship SSM or air launched subsonic ASM. Also, Russia military sources have stressed many times that they will not sell any missile with over 300-km range to China.

In the last two years, CLUB -S missiles were test launched for a total of 20 times, with a success rate of 75%. Sources say that the documents/materials for the launching have been delivered to China. China is contented with the overall performance of 3M54E.