- China has long built mock-ups US warships in the desert, likely to serve as targets.
- New images show an apparent USS Gerald R. Ford mock-up, indicating China is watching the Navy's newest carrier.
- The mock-ups could help China develop its bolstering missile force, but they also send a distinct message to the US.
Out in the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China, there are fake US warships sitting in the sand. These ships are widely believed to be targets.
These mock-ups would be very practical in this context, helping China develop and refine its missiles, a key part of China's defense strategy. China has previously conducted missile testing out in the desert.
China has been building these mock-ups for years, and the apparent targets, both past and present, may shed light on the People's Liberation Army's goals in testing and training, and also potentially highlight its capabilities should a conflict arise.
New satellite images, courtesy of Planet Labs, taken at the beginning of this year show what appear to be a mock-up of the US Navy's Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier on a range in the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang province. It is the latest target built in the area; satellites previously captured US aircraft carrier- and destroyer-shaped targets in October 2021.
In the past, satellite images have also captured what appeared to be a ballistic missile impact test site on the edge of the Gobi Desert in western China. A mock-up of a US aircraft carrier was also found there, and in 2013, there were multiple reports of the PLA "sinking" it during exercises. The accompanying satellite images of the target showed two craters apparently created by strikes.
Looking at the new images of the apparent Ford mock-up, which is more than 1,000 feet long, the target seems to be quite detailed. Four catapult tracks are marked on the model's deck, matching those found on the Ford. The island, too, is positioned in the same location as the Ford.
Work on the relatively new target, which was first reported on by The War Zone last week, began at least by July 2023, when satellite images captured two smaller carrier targets and an outline of a larger one in the same place where the apparent Ford mock-up was later built.
USS Gerald R. Ford is the US Navy's newest and most advanced supercarrier. It was commissioned over five years ago, but it suffered delivery delays and technological-integration issues, both of which inflated the Ford's cost to a whopping $13 billion, far exceeding what was expected, by the time it officially deployed on its first full deployment in May 2023.
That headaches with the new warship led the Navy to rethink how it does Ford-class carriers, but those early first-in-class setbacks don't mean the Ford isn't impressive — or a new chapter for aircraft carriers and the US Navy's warship capabilities and presence.
It is not surprising the Chinese would develop a mock-up of the new carrier, Tom Shugart, a former US Navy submarine commander who's now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Business Insider, given they could one day face the ship in a potential conflict.
As with the previous mock-ups, the targets could be an opportunity for China to test the missiles of the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) and further develop their technologies.
One potential function of these apparent targets, Shugart said, could be to test and refine seekers with image-recognition capabilities and help develop a missile's ability to accurately target particular ships or even specific parts of ships where a missile would do the most damage.
The main purpose of the targets is likely "to assess whether the target recognition capabilities of their missile seekers can differentiate between carriers and other targets of interest," Bryan Clark, a former US Navy officer and defense expert at the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider.
In a hypothetical war scenario, a missile, traveling at very high speeds before slowing down upon reentry, would only have a short time to find its target.
"The PLA wants to make sure the seeker can see a carrier, discern it from other ships in the area, and maneuver to hit it within only a few seconds," Clark explained.
With its fake warships sitting out in the desert, assuming the intended purpose is targeting as suspected, China could learn how best to use its missiles and learn what work still needs to be done to threaten US naval forces.
There are limitations though. These aren't real ships, moving and reacting in real time, though China did build a mock-up, what looks like an amphibious assault ship, on a railway a few years ago.
Any difference between hitting real US aircraft carriers and destroyers at sea and testing is going to result in some degraded level of realism, Shugart noted, but the mock-ups are still useful for testing PLARF's capabilities and gathering data.
The function of the warship targets may be more than any sort of testing or technological development and may also include what they say about China's priorities and capabilities.
The mock-up of the Ford, like other forms of PLARF's posturing, falls in line with Chinese military doctrine about deterrence and compellence, keeping enemies at bay with a specific threat and potentially using that threat to push an enemy to undertake a certain action or response.
"For the deterrents to work," Shugart said, "you've got to have a threat that's credible and known about."
By developing these mock-ups, especially of the new Ford, China may be purposefully making clear that it is hard at work on pushing back against the US Navy. Even if that particular capability isn't ready just yet or China's Rocket Force could has cracks in its facade as suggested by recent reports of corruption, the US Navy and its allies still have to take the threat seriously regardless.
China has long presented the PLARF as a formidable element of its military, from the military parade in 2015 which featured DF-26s painted with identifications in Western lettering to recent recruitment videos and materials.
And the posturing isn't necessarily overstated. Last year's China Military Power Report from the Pentagon sounded the alarms on PLARF's bolstered missile capabilities, with some stockpiles doubling or nearly doubling in 2022.
The DF-26s, intermediate-range ballistic missiles nicknamed "Guam Killers" for their potential to hit American forces on the island, went from 300 in 2021 to 500 during the following year. These weapons are also known as "carrier killers" given their anti-ship role.
The significant increase in the size of the stockpile of DF-26s is concerning considering they, like the Chinese military's medium-range DF-21 missiles, could be used to batter a variety of targets.
Shugart said that China's continued use of mock-ups of what resemble Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which could be seen in the most recent satellite images of the Taklamakan range and ones from October 2021, indicate China isn't thinking solely about killing carriers.
With China's bolstered stockpiles of DF-26 missiles, there are enough missiles available for these "carrier killers" to simply be "ship killers."
"The fact that we, on more than one occasion now, have seen destroyer-shaped mock-ups indicate to me that it's quite likely these weapons are being developed not just to strike carriers, but to strike destroyers also," he said