“The construction of 120 or more silos makes such a preemptive strike much harder as the US would have to target all of the silos as well as mobile launchers now.” “Prior to this development, the US military could possibly consider using nuclear weapons in a war near China to destroy large numbers of PLA troops and equipment,” said Heath. Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, a US-based nonprofit think tank, said the development shows Beijing is serious about increasing its nuclear deterrence – the idea that it could withstand a nuclear first strike from an adversary and still have nuclear weapons left that could inflict unacceptable losses on the opponent. “If the PLA (China’s People Liberation Army) has decided to invest in a large number of new silos for its ICBM force, this might suggest a shift in Beijing’s thinking on the matter,” Boyd said. “The relative merits of mobile versus silo-based ICBMs after the end of the Cold War have been frequently debated simplistically mobile systems are easier to hide and disperse, but more vulnerable if found, while silos are increasingly difficult to conceal, but harder to disable or destroy,” said Henry Boyd, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “It is projected to be able to strike the continental United States within 30 minutes,” the project’s website says.Ĭhina first showed off the DF-41 on mobile launchers in 2019, but its actual deployment has not been confirmed. The DF-41, also known as the CSS-X-20, is estimated to have a range of 12,000 to 15,000 kilometers (7,400 to 9,300 miles) and could be equipped with up to 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads, according to the Missile Threat Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. However, analysts said the silos, placed in a grid pattern, at 3-kilometer (1.9-mile) intervals, could be used to house Chinese-made DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Though researchers have identified 120 likely silos, there is no indication they are in use, or will be used into the future. Courtesy Planet Labs Inc./Center for Nonproliferation Studies Satellite images appear to show four Chinese missile silos at various stages of construction. “Anyone who dares to try, will find their heads bashed bloody against a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” Xi added, in comments that later appeared to be softened in the government’s own English language translation. Reports of the likely new missile field came just a day before Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in a nationalistic speech on the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary that China’s rise is a “historical inevitability” and it will no longer be “bullied, oppressed or subjugated” by foreign countries. “It’s much larger than anything we expected to see.” “It’s really a startling pace of construction,” he said, adding that the scope of the buildup was also surprising. Lewis told CNN on Friday that most of the silo construction, which has yet to be completed, has likely occurred in the past six months. The pair’s findings were first reported in the Washington Post. The researchers compared satellite photos taken during the past four months with images captured within the past week, finding the missile site covering a grid of hundreds of square kilometers in China’s Gansu province, said researcher Jeffrey Lewis, a Chinese nuclear weapons expert who examined the images with colleague Decker Eveleth, the first person to spot the silos. The likely missile field, comprising 120 silos that could potentially house weapons capable of reaching the United States mainland, was documented by researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies using satellite imagery supplied by commercial satellite company Planet Labs Inc. China is building a sprawling network of what appear to be intercontinental ballistic missile silos in its western desert that analysts say could change the equation for US military planners in Asia.
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