Militarily, China today is a force to be reckoned with. In recent years the People’s Liberation Army has made great strides in technology and innovation as well as numbers. China’s Dong Feng hypersonic missiles, for example, can travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound), armed with a high explosive or nuclear warhead. This gives the US Navy’s 7th fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan, an opportunity to think about how close it is willing to sail to China’s large land-based missile batteries.
