The full-scale replica of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer at Ruoqiang, confirmed in satellite imagery circulated by open-source analysts this week, is not a training prop. It is a targeting database.

Beijing's Naval Research Institute, which administers the Ruoqiang complex under PLA support authority assigned in 2023, has built a platform for weapons integration testing at real warship geometry -- sensor placement, deck spacing, Mk 41 launcher intervals -- against which anti-ship missile seekers can be refined without firing on a live vessel. The replica sits alongside a carrier deck mockup whose dimensions match USS Gerald R. Ford, a configuration that does not exist for defensive rehearsal. The European concern registered by The Korea Times this week, prompted by PLAN warship transits east of Taiwan, arrived at the same moment Beijing's Foreign Ministry rejected coastguard coordination language proposed by Washington and Brussels: the Ministry's June 26 statement named the EU by institution and the United States by treaty obligation, refusing both. That is not a talking point. That is a targeting list of a different kind. If the Ruoqiang program is producing seekers calibrated to Burke-class geometry, the next European parliament debate over Taiwan Strait transit rights will run against hardware that has already practiced the kill.