Pentagon Exaggerates Chinas Nuclear Capability to Justify
Buying
New Generation of U.S. Weapons, Report Finds
http://fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=568
Based on unclassified and declassified U.S. government
documents as well as commercial satellite images of Chinese
installations, the 250-page report, Chinese Nuclear Forces and
U.S. Nuclear War Planning, provides a detailed overview of Chinas
nuclear forces and its plans to upgrade them. It also describes two
nuclear strike scenarios that calculate the casualties that each
side would suffer.
(For the report, go to http://www.nukestrat.com/china/chinareport.htm.
For high-resolution Google Earth satellite images of dozens of
nuclear weapons-related and military sites in China, as well as
nuclear strike simulations from the report, go tohttp://www.nukestrat.com/china/FAS-NRDC2006.kmz.)
The reports main finding is that the Pentagon and others routinely
highlight specific incidents out of context that inaccurately
portray a looming Chinese threat. Specifically, the report
demonstrates they have been embellishing Chinas submarine and
long-range missile capabilities.
For the last two years, the Pentagons annual report on
Chinese military developments cited the intrusion of a Chinese
nuclear-powered attack submarine into Japanese territorial waters
in 2004 as emblematic of how Chinas military is trying to expand
its reach deep into the Pacific. What the DOD reports did not
mention, the FAS/NRDC report reveals, is Chinese submarine patrols
have dropped from a peak of six in 2000 to zero in 2005. Dramatic
news coverage earlier this month of a Chinese submarine surfacing
in the vicinity of the USS Kitty Hawk carrier group near Okinawa
failed to mention that this was the first reported Chinese
submarine patrol in nearly two years.
In addition, the report found that Chinas sole submarine capable
of firing ballistic missiles, which was built in 1981, has never
gone on an extended deterrent patrol with nuclear missiles. In
fact, the submarine has never been fully operational.
Similarly, U.S. intelligence agencies warn that the Chinese will be
able to target 75 to 100 nuclear warheads at the continental United
States by 2015. But that prediction assumes China will be able to
deploy 40 to 55 new DF-31A missiles before 2015, in addition to two
other shorter-range missiles. Given that the Chinese have yet to
conduct test flights of the DF-31A, the report concluded that that
assumption is highly questionable.
The Pentagon also has made much out of the fact that Chinas
next-generation missiles will be mobile. But the majority of
Chinas ballistic missile force always has been mobile, the report
points out, and the U.S. military has targeted it as a routine
matter since the 1980s. In fact, improved U.S. targeting of Chinese
missiles has played a significant role in prompting China to
develop new long-range missiles, according to U.S. intelligence
agencies.
The report concludes that the United States will be easily able to
maintain its overwhelming nuclear superiority over the Chinese for
decades. But the report also points out the China needs relatively
few warheads to adequately deter the United States. A hypothetical
Chinese attack with its 20 nuclear long-range ballistic missiles on
20 U.S. cities would result in as many as 40 million casualties,
the report estimates, and blanket large portions of the United
States and Canada with radioactive fallout. Likewise, the United
States needs relatively few warheads to deter China. A limited and
highly accurate U.S. nuclear attack on Chinas 20 long-range
ballistic missile silos would result in as many as 11 million
casualties and scatter radioactive fallout across three Chinese
provinces, according to a simulation described in the report.
