After the Cold War ended, the U.S. Navy dropped the ball with respect to anti-ship weaponry as the prospect of a major sea battle faded from view. China took a different tack, spending big on naval modernization with new ships and submarines and an increasingly sophisticated array of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles or "carrier killers" fired from land, sea and undersea. Its road-mobile DF-21D missile, for instance, can target military vessels about 810 nm off the coast, and its YJ-18 subsonic cruise missile fielded in 2015 can reach out 290 nm, creating a threat ring of 264,200 nm2. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to rely on the mid-1980s sea-skimming Boeing Harpoon Block 1C missile, with an unclassified range of 67 nm.
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