"War games conducted by Chinese researchers found the US military’s most prized aircraft carrier could be reliably sunk with relative ease in the event of a hot war in the South China Sea.

A volley of hypersonic missiles could reliably sink the US military’s most powerful aircraft carrier group in a potential conflict, according to war game simulations carried out by a team of Chinese military planners.

Using 24 of their most advanced anti-ship missiles, Chinese forces consistently destroyed a carrier fleet led by the USS Gerald R. Ford over the course of 20 mock battles in simulations which were run on a war game platform employed by the People’s Liberation Army.

The basic principle underlying the exercise was to be “lenient with the enemy and strict with oneself,” Cao explained. As the Hong Kong-based outlet explained, “during the simulation, the PLA used its sea-based surveillance network to detect and identify the US carrier group before firing eight of the less-reliable hypersonic missiles simultaneously from southern and central sites in China.” Though “some of the missiles were intercepted, the attack depleted the US fleet’s SM-3 munitions, paving the way for the PLA to launch “eight of its more accurate hypersonic missiles from northern and western China, with four focused on the aircraft carrier while the others targeted the destroyers,” the outlet noted. “After the attack, four ships survived from the blue [US] team, with the destroyers having the most remaining, on average.” A “mop-up” operation with six of the less accurate hypersonic missiles was able to dispatch with the remaining vessels, the research paper determined. After the simulation was run 20 times to allow for different variables which could affect the outcome of the engagement, the team’s strategy was ultimately able to eliminate an average of 5.6 out of 6 surface vessels – effectively meaning the “total destruction” of the carrier group. The release of a paper detailing the war game in May marked “the first time the results of simulated hypersonic strikes against a US carrier group have been made public” by China’s military."