Who Is The Bigger Threat To U.S. Airpower, China Or Iran?

China's three DF-21D missile launchers. (Internet photo)

Franz-Stefan Gady, The Diplomat: China or Iran: Who Is the Bigger Threat to U.S. Airpower?

A new comparative analysis sheds light on the threat Tehran’s ballistic missile force poses to U.S. airbases.

China and Iran’s anti-access/anti-denial capabilities are often lumped together in public statements by senior U.S. defense officials and the American media. That frequently leads to a mischaracterization of Tehran’s A2/AD capabilities — particularly when discussing Iran’s conventional ballistic missile force.

A new operational analysis by Jacob L. Heim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, published in the Air & Space Power Journal, offers a comparative perspective of the risk to U.S. air bases from Chinese and Iranian conventional theater ballistic missiles, key weapon systems in both countries’ A2/AD strategies.

WNU Editor: Iran is not China .... as this analysis points out. Then again ... who is to say that China may eventually sell their missiles to Iran .... China's Non-Committed Relationship With Nonproliferation (US News and World Report).