I understand Jeff, but who says that they needed to be seen tested according to "full-up" to believe it? It's a very sophisticated and complicated weapon systems that must be tested in secrecy to be away from the prying eyes of US satellites and such. Maybe China had figure out a way to test them without going through what you've said before. We on the other hand have to just wait and see.
Anyone can believe whatever they want.
I believe the Chinese are working on an ASBM system, and trying to develop it.
But, in order to hit a maneuvering target at sea, with all of the weather conditions, atmospheric conditions, barometric pressures, humidity, etc. that exist out over the ocean, and against a manuevering, tens of thousands of ton target vessel on the ocean, will require them to ultimately test it in that environment if they want to ensure that it will do what they want.
Computer syms, dry tests, test against static objects in the desert, etc., etc. will only go so far.
So first they test against a simple, straight line moving target. Once they perfect that, they add difficulty to it. Faster movement, harder manuevering. When they know they can do that, they add electronic warfare, jamming, decoys, etc. so they can know how to modify the missile, its warhead, the C4ISR sensors required to make it work, and the software to account for these things.
To get it right, it will take numerous tests.
Just imagine all of the targeting, surveillance, recon, satellite, sub-surface, airborne, surface sensors, etc. that have to come together to make this work, and all of the software to tie it together. Then the propulsion and particularly onboard guidance and counter measures they will try to build into it. All of it has to work together. The only way to know for sure it is doing that, and has the capability to actually hit a moving ship 1,000 or 1,5000 km away is to actually do it.
In order to fire a balistic missile into a test area somehwere in the Ocean, they will have to announce the test and have other vessels stand clear. The would create an exclusion zone so they do not accidently sink a cargo vessels or some other vessel by accident.
That type of ballistic missile test, over the ocean will be detected and tracked. Heck, a long range test like that over land will be detected and tracked.
The US does this type of thing all the time. It's what you do if you develop these types of weapons. The US recently did two tests of the Long Range Anti-shipping missile, fired against moving container ships at sea as targets.
It is far too crtical a task when you are betting the defense of your homeland on such a system, to not test it rigorously, particlarly a new technology like this.
Anyhow...as I said, people can believe whatever they want. IMHO, the PRC is being quite successful in a Sun Tzu campaign, which is kind of embedded into the actual development of the system, to get people to treat it like it is already ready, when they have never tested the entire system, end to end. Have to give them credit for that.
Perhaps one day they will test it end to end and put it all to rest.
But really now, I am repeating things that have been regurgitated on this thread (and others) numerous times. I just wanted to get this dose of reality out there once more. That's all. I hope you understand my explanation...and you certainly can believe whatever you wish about it.
