New Nuclear-Armed Chinese Submarine Will Threaten US Mainland From Chinese Coast

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The People’s Liberation Army – Navy is fast-tracking a new class of Type 096 nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines to operate alongside its existing JIN-class boats into the 2030s and beyond, a development which greatly expands China’s ability to launch nuclear attacks upon the continental United States from the Pacific Ocean.

Nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines, called SSBNs, lurk quietly and secretly in the dark corners of the ocean to ensure the possibility of launching a catastrophic retaliatory second-strike nuclear attack. The concept behind undersea nuclear weapons forms the conceptual backbone of “strategic deterrence,” essentially keeping peace through strength and the promise of a second strike. The idea, somewhat paradoxically, is to deter and prevent nuclear war by assuring complete destruction.

The Pentagon’s annual China report explained that the PLA-Navy now operates at least six JIN-class SSBNs, or nuclear armed ballistic missile submarines, armed with JL-2 and JL-3 sub-launched nuclear weapons. The Pentagon assessment, called Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, explains that JL-2 missiles are capable of reaching targets out to nearly 4,000 miles and the emerging JL-3s can extend farther to 5,400 miles. China’s ability to hold the US at risk of nuclear attack has been present for many years now with its growing fleet o

“With six operational SSBNs, the PLAN has the capacity to maintain a constant at sea deterrent presence. With a range of approximately 3,900NM, a JIN equipped with the JL-2 would have to operate in the mid-Pacific Ocean in order to threaten targets in the western half of the Continental United States (as well as Hawaii and Alaska) or east of Hawaii in order to threaten targets on the East Coast of the United States,” the Pentagon report states.

The text of the Pentagon analysis catalogs the trajectory of the evolving China undersea nuclear threat with its discussion of the arriving JL-3 missile, a nuclear weapon which further increases the PLA-Navy’s ability to hold the US at risk of nuclear attack. The JL-3, the Pentagon assessment explains, massively expands the ranges from which the PLA-Navy can hold the US at risk of undersea nuclear attack.

“PRC sources claim the JL-3 has a range of over 5,400NM which would allow a JIN armed with this missile to target portions of CONUS from Chinese littoral waters,” the Pentagon report says.