This month, multiple media outlets reported that satellite imagery showed a detailed, full-scale replica of a US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer in China’s remote Taklamakan Desert.
Construction of the 155-meter mock-up began around October 2025 at the Ruoqiang Test Range in Xinjiang and was completed within six months. Located 2,700 kilometers from the nearest ocean, the structure marks a major advance over previous flat outlines, incorporating a full mast, simulated radar equipment and sensors designed to reproduce an active warship’s radar profile.
The mock-up could allow the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to test anti-ship ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons and AI-assisted guidance systems against a more realistic target and simulated electronic countermeasures.
The facility aligns with China’s anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) strategy, which seeks to deter or defeat US carrier strike groups intervening in a conflict over Taiwan. The facility also includes rail-mounted structures that can simulate moving naval targets and comes amid a reported expansion of domestic missile production.
Replicating a warship’s radar signature could help refine target classification, over-the-horizon tracking and weapons guidance. Detecting a vessel is not enough: identifying its type and affiliation allows forces to verify targets, select appropriate weapons and coordinate electronic countermeasures and intercepts.
Having previously built flat mock-ups of US carriers in Xinjiang, China’s shift to three-dimensional destroyer replicas suggests it may be studying how to sequentially breach a carrier strike group’s (CSG) defenses, beginning with its escorts.
Losing an Arleigh Burke wouldn’t automatically render a US carrier defenseless, as US naval defense relies on a network of escorts, aircraft and satellites, as well as the carrier’s own systems.
However, losing one would remove nearly 100 vertical-launch cells, a major radar and fire-control node, antisubmarine capability and part of the formation’s command network in a single strike.
The remaining ships would face larger surveillance sectors, fewer engagement opportunities and greater magazine pressure, potentially forcing the carrier to withdraw, alter course or divert aircraft from strike missions to self-protection.
In a May 2026 article in the peer-reviewed journal Tactical Missile Technology, Gao Tianyun and his co-authors argue that defeating a carrier group would require opening a narrow breach in its distributed defenses rather than attacking every ship simultaneously.
Their proposed attack sequence begins with submarine-launched hypersonic missiles striking forward Aegis missile-defense nodes, with decoys and low-cost munitions drawing defensive fire toward the flanks, while concentrated hypersonic salvos would overwhelm successive escorts along a single attack corridor.
Gao and his co-authors say a “leader-follower” missile swarm would then re-task surviving weapons after each strike and guide ballistic missiles toward the carrier.
They add that aircraft and expendable reconnaissance systems would assess the damage, allowing AI to reallocate missiles and repeat the strike–assess–strike cycle until the group’s command structure, defenses and carrier core collapse.
But striking a desert mockup is far easier than finding and attacking a moving target that can fight back.
Destroying a moving warship — let alone a carrier — remains a daunting challenge. Space-based sensors may work well against ships in port, but tracking maneuvering vessels can be limited by satellite coverage, revisit times and network bandwidth; imagery only a few hours old may already be useless for targeting.
Arleigh Burke-class destroyers also operate within mutually supporting, multilayered defenses combining hard-kill interceptors with soft-kill countermeasures.
SM-6, SM-2 and RIM-116 interceptors, backed by close-in weapons systems, provide layered kinetic protection. Meanwhile, electronic warfare, chaff and infrared flares can obscure a ship’s signature or confuse incoming missile seekers.
The best defense may also be a good offense. US forces could therefore follow a “shoot the archer” approach, destroying missile launchers and their supporting sensors before they can attack.
Drawing on the “Inside-Out Defense” concept developed by Thomas Mahnken, Travis Sharp, Billy Fabian and Peter Kouretsos, US forces could combine survivable units inside the First Island Chain with supporting forces operating beyond the densest missile-threat zone.
Forces operating within the First Island Chain could include mobile land-based cruise and anti-ship missile batteries, air and sea drones, special operations units, stealth fighters and submarines designed to survive within China’s A2/AD zone.
They could pass targeting data to surface action groups and combat aircraft positioned near the zone’s outer edge. Farther back, CSGs, amphibious ready groups (ARGs) and strategic bombers would generate sorties, provide strategic reserves and preserve nuclear deterrence.
Yet such a distributed posture would remain dependent on the sensors, communications and logistics networks connecting its widely separated forces.
Rather than attacking carriers and destroyers directly, the PLA could target the force integrators — the networks and logistics assets that hold US joint operations together. Potential targets include forward air and naval bases, logistics ships, tankers, airborne early-warning aircraft, missile-defense radars, satellites and computer networks.
The aim would be to blind and starve US forces, fragment their operations and create openings to destroy major warships, including an Arleigh Burke destroyer or even a carrier.
A US-China naval clash may therefore hinge less on the ability to destroy individual warships than on the capacity to fuse sensors, maintain targeting networks and sustain missile salvos under combat disruption.
That prospect could push US forces toward a more distributed and logistics-resilient posture while making satellites, bases, tankers and command networks — not carriers alone — the decisive targets in a Western Pacific conflict.
