The Chinese Communist Party is building more underground silos to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to information in a new report. But the Chinese Communist Party lags far behind not only the United States but also Russia in terms of nuclear strike capabilities.
The South China Morning Post recently reported that the silos are being built in northwestern China to house the Dongfeng-41 (DF-41) and Dongfeng-31AG (DF-31AG) missiles, which the Communist Party claims have a range of 10,000 to 14,000 kilometers (6,200 to 8,700 miles).
In a late February report, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), citing satellite imagery, said the Chinese Communist Party’s military rocket force has begun building at least 16 missiles in a missile training area west of Wuhai, Inner Mongolia. A missile training area west of Wuhai, Inner Mongolia, has begun construction of at least 16 silos.
As military competition with the United States intensifies, the report said, the Communist Party is moving to expand its nuclear deterrent, and building new missile silos is part of that effort.
The Communist Party claims the DF-41 intercontinental missile can be launched from silo platforms or mobile launchers by road or rail.
The new underground silos are located at the Jilantai Training Center (note: the town of Jilantai is located in central Alashanzuo Banner, Inner Mongolia) and cover a total area of 200 square kilometers, with silos spaced between 2.2 and 4.4 kilometers apart, so that two of them cannot be destroyed in a single nuclear attack, the report said.
In its 2019 annual report on Chinese military capabilities, the U.S. Department of Defense said the Communist Party is considering additional DF-41 launch options, including rail-mobile and silo launchers. 2020, a U.S. Department of Defense report said the Jilantai training base “could be used to develop at least one silo for DF-41 missiles.”
But even if the Chinese Communist Party doubles or triples the number of ballistic missile silos, it will still lag far behind the United States and Russia in terms of nuclear strike capabilities, the FAS report said. The United States has 450 silos, 400 of which are loaded with missiles, while Russia has about 130 active silos and the CCP has 18 to 20 active silos, according to the FAS.
The group also said satellite imagery of the Communist Party’s training base showed it had built two straight-through tunnels with enough space to accommodate mobile missile launchers, meaning they could be hidden.
Antony Wong Tong, a military analyst in Macau, said the new silos indicate that the Communist Party is increasing the “quantity and quality” of its ground-based missile deployments.
“The use of silos is the most reliable method of counterattack, but these facilities are also prime bombing targets for competitors because they are more easily detected by satellites.” These ground facilities, he said, “need to be supported by mobile launchers.”
In late 2020, Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Program at the Federation of American Scientists, a think tank, and his companion Matt Korda wrote an updated report on Chinese nuclear weapons (Chinese nuclear forces, 2020), which provides a more detailed picture of the CCP’s nuclear weapons footprint.
The report says that the CCP has a total of 36 Dongfeng-31AGs, deployed in 2018, with a range of 11,200 kilometers, a single warhead with a yield of 200,000-300,000 tons, and 36 actual deployed nuclear warheads. A total of 18 Dongfeng-41s are likely to be deployed in 2021 with a range of 12,000 km, three warheads, and 200,000-300,000 tons of yield, with 54 warheads actually deployed.
On the other hand, the U.S. still has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads and about 2,080 operationally deployed nuclear warheads, despite massive reductions in its nuclear arsenal. The U.S. Strategic Command holds all strategic nuclear weapons, including: 450 land-based LGM-30G Volunteer III intercontinental missiles; 14 Ohio-class submarines, each equipped with 24 Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles; about 500 AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles, about 400 B61 guided air-delivered tactical nuclear bombs, and 650 B83 nuclear bombs.
All of these are under the direct command of the President and Secretary of Defense, through the U.S. Strategic Command, which is relatively more integrated and efficient, reflecting the degree of use of U.S. high technology as well as management capabilities, survivability and rapid response strike advantage is obvious.
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