Re: PLAN Carrier Operations..News, Videos & Photos
The ship could easily have been sunk and then raised again to send to the breakers.
As for corner detectors, well, has anyone considered that they might have been added for a separate test as any missile firings?
The PLA could easily have been testing out some new OTH radars or radar spysats to see how easily they can pick up a carrier sized target and at what distance.
During the missile test, the reflectors could have also given them a good indication of how far away the active seekers on the missiles would have been able to pick out a carrier sized target to help refine tactics and procedures for trying to take one out.
Those are just some of the more obvious possibilities, and I am sure there are many many more others, and given everything we know, especially the part about the test being so far ago that they have had time to raise the ship and send it to the breakers, I would have to say that this being the result of an AShBM test is probably the least likely of all possibilities.
If the PLA did test an AShBM out at sea, they would have to be silly to think the US, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam would not know about it.
If the PLA does fire an AShBM at a sea based target, it will be to send a message to the above nations as much as to validate the missile system itself, the same as the Chinese ASAT test. It would be pointless for the Americans to keep quite about such an event because it will be so easily detected by so many others, and also because the US having the ability to detect such a test and piece together the pieces is a forgone conclusion and the US would not be tipping its hand in any way to acknowledge that they could see what was going on.
I am starting to think that this whole rumor started because someone saw the pictures of corner reflectors pointing skywards, and DF21D was the first thing to pop into their mind, made a comment online and the internet did the rest.