[ The Drive ] China Increasing Its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silos By A Factor Of Ten: Report
Recent satellite imagery shows that China appears to be building another major intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, silo field, the second of its kind to have been identified by analysts in the space of a month. This is a major development, with the analysts responsible for locating it describing it as “the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever.” However, while Beijing now seems to be rapidly building up a previously neglected arm of its strategic missile forces, exactly why it is doing this now remains something of a mystery.
The new field of silos was identified as such by Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and it’s located near the city of Hami in the eastern end of Xinjiang province, in the northwest of China. The analysts’ findings were first published in the New York Times.
The new missile silo field near Hami is around 240 miles northwest of the one that was revealed earlier this month, near Yumen, in Gansu province.
While imagery of the Yumen field seems to reveal that construction is underway on 120 missile silos, work that started in February, the one near Hami is less far advanced, with work reportedly having begun there only this past March. Since then, however, the telltale dome-like shelters that analysts have identified as being associated with the building of silos have appeared over at least 14 individual sites at Hami, with preparations noted at 19 others. In all, Korda and Kristensen expect that the Hami field could accommodate around 110 silos, arranged in a fairly dense, grid-like pattern, with the silos apparently less than two miles apart.
As Korda and Kristensen point out, that would provide China with more silo-based ICBMs than Russia and more than half the number fielded by the United States. China, like Russia, also operates road-mobile ICBM launchers, with around 100 thought to be in the active PLARF inventory.
The overall figure has, for some time now, been predicted to grow, with Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, stating earlier this year that he expected China’s nuclear weapons stockpile “to double (if not triple or quadruple) over the next decade.”
When the previous missile silo field was uncovered at Yumen, some analysts, including Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on missiles and nuclear weapons at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, suggested that it might indicate that China was about to introduce a “shell game” strategy, something that The War Zone considered at the time. In this, potentially large numbers of silos are filled with perhaps only a few functional missiles, providing potential enemies with much more complicated targeting requirements, should they wish to wipe out all the silo-based ICBMs in a first strike.
Looks like China is gearing up for a possible nuclear war.