This week, as China looked back at 70 years of Communist rule, its military parade looked to the future with a whole new generation of deadly naval and airborne weaponry.  Newsweek reports that in a speech last week, retired Admiral William McRaven, the former head of U.S. special forces, called China’s intensifying military build-up “a holy shit moment for the United States.”

One of the new weapons on display for the first time was the Dongfeng-17 (DF-17), a hypersonic anti-ship missile, dubbed a “carrier killer.”  Reportedly designed to operate at speeds of Mach 5 or greater and to be highly maneuverable in its glide stage, some analysts are concerned that the existing US anti-ballistic defense systems might not be able to counter the new missile.

Reuters quotes Nozomu Yoshitomi, professor at Japan’s Nihon University and a retired major general in Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force, who said the DF-17 posed serious questions about the effectiveness of the regional missile defense system the United States and Japan are building.

“There is a possibility that if we do not acquire a more sophisticated ballistic missile defense system, it will become impossible for both the United States and Japan to respond,” Yoshitomi said.

While the DF-17 is a shorter range missile, which could be used in the restricted waters of Taiwan Strait or parts of the South China Sea, the longer-range DF-21D, also dubbed a carrier killer, is designed to hit warships at sea at a range of up to 1,500 kilometers. For accurate targeting, however, the DF-21D needs a spotter. Also in the parade for the first time was a supersonic DR-8 spy drone capable of Mach 3.3, which might serve as a spotter for the DF-21D carrier killers. The Chinese GJ-11 “Sharp Sword” stealth drone, was also on display.

Also featured in the parade were pellet-like underwater drones which Elsa Kania of the Center for a New American Security commented were a “notable manifestation of the PLA’s embrace of unmanned systems for naval warfare.”