Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
BEIJING — The China Daily’s July 12 report of an unexpectedly long range for the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile was unfounded, says a China-watching defense analyst. The newspaper, which acts as a government mouthpiece directed at the outside world, quoted a range of 2,700 km (1,600 mi.) for the potentially revolutionary missile, well ahead of the Pentagon estimate of 1,500-plus km.
BEIJING — Chinese space launcher builder CALT has made 170 modifications to the Long March 2F rocket that will loft the Tiangong 1 docking target, says national space conglomerate CASC. The modifications are not specified. But when Aviation Week last year saw the launcher under construction in Beijing, officials said its structure had been altered. CASC now says that five technologies are being tried for the first time on the rocket, but it is withholding specifics.
For more than a century, surface warships have been struggling to survive against mines, submarines, aircraft and, more recently, cruise missiles. Now China's rapid development of a sophisticated anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) raises the threat to a new level.
