(Washington, D.C.) If merely a few nuclear weapons could unleash massive, unimagined devastation upon cities and even entire countries, why would any country need more than a small amount of weapons in their arsenal?
Mass still matters, according to the Pentagon’s top nuclear weapons official, who expressed alarm about the pace of Chinese nuclear weapons expansion across ground, air and sea domains.
In what could have been a reference to the threat of a massive and simultaneous incoming salvo of enemy ICBMs, air-dropped nuclear weapons and even sub-launched ballistic missiles, Adm. Charles “Chas” Richard, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, said “it does not matter if your weapons are superior if you do not have enough of them.”
China’s Nuclear Arsenal Doubles
Given these types of threat scenarios, the threat is greatly amplified by the growing realization that China will likely double its nuclear arsenal within just the next decade. “Only four months ago, commercial satellite imagery discovered what is accepted to nuclear missile fields in western China. Each has nearly 120 ICBM silos. Now these compliment and are added into what they already have,” Richard told an audience at the 2021 Space and Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, Ala.
Pentagon’s 2020 China Military Report states that the number of warheads arming Beijing’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of threatening America will likely grow to 200 in the next five years.
DF-26, H-20 and JL-3
As an element of this expansion, China is increasing its inventory of long-range land-fired DF-26 Anti-Ship missiles able to fire both conventional and nuclear missiles, the report said. Cited as a highly dangerous “carrier killer,” the DF-26 is reported to operate with an ability to destroy aircraft carriers as far as 2,000 nautical miles off shore.
Part of the threat is compounded by the existence of Chinese road-mobile launchers capable of maneuvering to obscured launch locations and, in some instances, firing nuclear weapons armed with multiple re-entry vehicles. “China’s rapidly improving its strategic nuclear capability capacity, growing and enhancing its missile force multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles,” Richard said.
