Navy Times By Christopher J. Hunter 10/19/2021
Late Saturday evening, Oct. 16, China’s successful August test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile was publicly reported for the first time by the “Financial Times,” a ”capability that caught US intelligence by surprise,” according to “Financial Times” sources.
Fifty-nine years earlier, on Oct. 16, 1962, the Soviet Union’s forward deployment of nuclear capable ballistic missiles in Cuba also caught the United States by surprise.
A 1960s-era Soviet ballistic missile could have traversed the 943 nautical miles between Havana and Washington, D.C. quickly enough to ensure impact if not engaged, and virtually no target in the continental United States was out of range. Thus began the Cuban Missile Crisis, a 13-day period when the United States confronted its most existential threat since World War II.
Cuba represented for the Soviet Union the most attractive available forward strategic operating base from which it could threaten the United States and attempt to tilt the global balance of power in the Soviets’ favor.
What nation represents the same for China — a global power with significantly greater sophistication than the Soviet Union ever had in its drive to achieve strategic dominance over the United States?
Consider El Salvador.
San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, provides a similar geographic reference point of departure to American targets as Havana did. From San Salvador, the distances in nautical miles to southeastern high-value targets in the United States are as follows:
• 889 nautical miles to SOUTHCOM in Doral, Florida.
• 943 nautical miles to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida where SOCOM and CENTCOM are headquartered.
• 1,049 nautical miles to Houston, Texas, a Gulf Coast regional zone containing the largest oil refining center in the United States including four locations of the United States’ strategic petroleum reserves.
More:
https://www.navytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2021/10/19/a-central-american-missile-crisis/
