US develops cheap ship killer to deal with Chicom fleet

 American Defense News:

Communist China has been effectively employing a vast fleet of low-tech, lightly armed government vessels and dual-use civilian craft and naval militias to expand and dominate large swaths of the Western Pacific.

Until now, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard could only respond to this ‘Gray Zone’ armada with small deck guns, scarce heavy torpedoes, or expensive anti-ship missiles and line-of-sight laser-guided bombs.

That equation has now changed as the Pentagon has shown off its latest low-tech 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) – appropriately named ‘QUICKSINK,’ in an impressive live-fire demonstration in the Gulf of Mexico.

This ubiquitous bomb can be dropped cheaply by fighter aircraft up to 20 miles away from the relatively lightly armed, but increasingly large support vessels the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is employing to coordinate its small boat swarms.
...

The US has heavier weapons for the bigger ships.  Ukraine has demonstrated the effectiveness of the heavier weapons against large ships like the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. 

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