Researchers in the United States have identified the construction of 119 new international missile silos in a desert in northwest China, suggesting the country is implementing plans to strengthen its strategic nuclear capabilities.
The researchers discovered the construction in commercial satellite imagery of remote areas west and southwest of the city of Yumen on the edge of the Gobi Desert in Gansu Province.
The images show circular excavations, long trenches for communication, and surface structures that coincide with control centers and silos at other launch sites in China, according to Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on China’s nuclear program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
“It was a recognizable design,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s hard to imagine that it’s anything else.”
The construction of the silo is likely to fuel the debate in Washington about the Pentagon’s plans to modernize the American nuclear arsenal. It could also fuel the efforts of the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, to involve China in strategic arms control negotiations that have so far only included the United States, the Soviet Union and Russia.
“This build – it’s worrying,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said when asked about the build previously reported in the Washington Post.
“We encourage Beijing to join us in practical measures to reduce the risks of destabilizing tensions,” he added.
China has refused to participate in arms control talks because its nuclear arsenal is much smaller than that of the two major nuclear powers in the world. At the same time, it is pursuing a broad modernization program that raises questions about its intentions.
China’s latest defense strategy, released in 2019, said it would “keep its nuclear capabilities at the minimum necessary for national security.” It has also vowed not to use nuclear weapons first or against any non-nuclear state. China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about the website.
The silo construction is not unexpected, although the speed and size surprised the researchers who examined it. In April, the commander of the United States Strategic Command, Admiral Charles A. Richard, appeared to be pointing to the development when he told a congressional committee that China was expanding its missile silos “on a potentially large scale.”
The Pentagon’s latest report on China’s armed forces, released last fall, estimated the Chinese maintain “an operational supply of nuclear warheads in the lower 200 range,” including about 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The report said China intends to strengthen its “nuclear triad” of strategic weapons, which would enable it to launch nuclear weapons from land, sea and air.
“These developments and China’s lack of transparency raise concerns that China is not only postponing its minimal deterrent requirements, but that it may move away from its longstanding minimalist stance on the armed forces,” the Pentagon report said.
Monterey researchers say China started construction on the site last year, not long after its latest international ballistic missile, the DF-41, debuted in Beijing’s 2019 military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Although the DF-41 was designed for mobile launch vehicles, the Pentagon reported that China was aiming to station some of them in underground silos. Work on the site accelerated in February, Lewis said.
In February, the Federation of American Scientists reported the expansion of silos at a military training area near Jilantai, about 600 miles east of Inner Mongolia.
The design of the Yumen site does not necessarily mean that China plans to deploy an additional 100 missiles there. Instead, it could reflect a strategy the United States considered in the 1970s of moving fewer missiles through a larger network of silos like a “hut game”, making it harder for an adversary to get them the first Destroy attack.
“It’s obviously a potentially very significant increase,” said Lewis, “and I think that’s going to have a pretty big impact on the debates on US ICBM replacement and anti-missile defense and other programs.”
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