A senior Pentagon official said Thursday that China has deployed anti-ship cruise missiles on land it claims in disputed areas of the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea), marking the first public confirmation of such activities by the U.S. government.
China “has deployed radar systems, anti-ship cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and has rotated fighter jets through features it claims in the South China Sea,” Abraham Denmark, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, said at a Congressional hearing.
Denmark did not say where in the disputed waters China has deployed anti-ship cruise missiles, but he criticized Beijing’s “unilateral changing of the strategic landscape of the South China Sea.”
“Once completed and outfitted, these facilities will greatly improve China’s capabilities to enforce its maritime and territorial claims, and project power further from China’s shores,” he told the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces at the House Committee on Armed Services.
Read the full story at Tankler