China is developing a new generation of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, part of a large-scale buildup of its nuclear arsenal, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command recently disclosed to Congress.
Gen. Anthony Cotton, who took over Strategic Command in December, revealed details of the new mobile ICBM development in closed-door testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, The Washington Times has learned.
The four-star nuclear forces commander described the rapid deployment of Chinese strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines as “breathtaking” – and was the second Strategic Command leader to testify to the alarming pace of nuclear expansion by Beijing.
The new missile was mentioned by Gen. Cotton in a little-noticed passage in his prepared testimony to the committee.
In outlining Chinese missile advancement, including that China now has more ICBM launchers than the United States, Gen. Cotton stated that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force is “developing a new generation of mobile ICBMs.”
A Strategic Command spokesman declined to comment further on the new missile, citing a policy of not discussing classified information. The spokesman said the general stands by his testimony on the weapon.
The disclosure comes as the United States government is struggling to modernize its own aging nuclear forces, including 400 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs that are nearing the end of their life cycle. The Air Force notified Congress in January that the development of the Sentinel ICBM to replace the aging Minuteman missiles is facing cost overruns and a possible two-year delay in deploying the weapon. The Pentagon plans to buy 650 Sentinels.
The United States has no road-mobile or rail-mobile missiles and has in the past rejected mobile basing of ICBMs as potentially destabilizing. By contrast, China has several types of mobile missiles, including two road-mobile ICBMs, mobile intermediate- and medium-range missiles, and mobile short-range missiles mounted on truck-like launchers.
Mobile ICBMs complicate the U.S.’s ability to deter a nuclear attack because the weapons are easily hidden and difficult to track.
China‘s overall nuclear buildup was mentioned in 2020 by Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of a five-year plan ending in 2025. For nuclear arms, the Chinese plan is designed to “strengthen strategic forces” and “accelerate the creation of high-level strategic deterrence.”
Gen. Cotton was asked during a committee hearing Feb. 29 to describe the Chinese buildup of its land-, sea- and air-based nuclear weapons.
“As my predecessor said — and I love using this terminology — …the breakout that we saw and the advancements and how quickly the advancements that we’re seeing in China to rapidly create a viable triad is breathtaking,” he said.
Previously, China’s most advanced known ICBM was the DF-41, a road-mobile ICBM that can carry at least three multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicle, or MIRV, warheads.
Sen. Deb Fischer, Nebraska Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services’ strategic forces subcommittee, said Chinese nuclear expansion is a major concern.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party “is modernizing its nuclear forces at breakneck speed, and in terms of producing new weapons and new types of delivery systems, they already outpace the U.S,” Ms. Fischer said. “These are late-stage warnings — Congress must commit to updating our nuclear forces which should include workforce investments, applying the Defense Production Act, and restoring our manufacturing capability.”
Hints in blogs
Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert, said hints of a new mobile missile have circulated on Chinese military internet sites until closed down by regime authorities in 2021. Word of a new mobile ICBM superseding the DF-41 had been mentioned in military blogs as early as 2020.
“Sometimes called the DF-45 or DF-51, it is clearly intended to outperform the DF-41,” said Mr. Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Mr. Fisher said reports from Chinese military sites are hard to confirm, but one blog posting from Aug. 8, 2020, stated that the DF-45 would be “my country’s new generation of solid heavy well-based intercontinental missiles.”
The DF-45 would have a takeoff weight of 112 tons, a payload weighing 3.6 tons and would be armed with seven 650 kiloton warheads. The new missile’s estimated range would be between 7,456 miles to 9,320 miles.
“Such an ICBM would not be much larger than a DF-41 to preclude a road-mobile version,” Mr. Fisher said.
North Korea has produced the world’s largest transporter-erector launcher (TEL) for its Hwasong-17 ICBM, a missile that was mostly built with Chinese assistance, he added.
“So, China could produce TELs much larger than the 16-wheel TEL of the DF-41, to transport a larger ICBM like DF-45/51,” Mr. Fisher said.
There have also been reports that the People’s Liberation Army’s main missile contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), is working to build larger solid-fuel rocket motors. Early Chinese ICBMs were liquid-fueled, requiring longer lead times to prepare for launch. The DF-41 and DF-31 are solid-fueled.
Critics say the Biden administration has done little to respond to the Chinese nuclear forces breakout and instead has sought to draw Beijing in arms control talks. China so far has rejected holding substantive strategic nuclear arms talks, arguing in part its nuclear arsenal has been far smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.
A major element of the large nuclear expansion by China was spotted by U.S. intelligence in western China, where construction of three large ICBM fields were discovered several years ago. The Pentagon says the silos are now being filled with more than 300 ground-based ICBMs that the Pentagon says are silo-based version of the current, road-mobile DF-31. The DF-41 and the next-generation mobile missile also could be placed in the western China missile fields.
“The tragedy is that the U.S. is now struggling to modernize all three legs of our nuclear triad at the same time and the Biden administration has no intention to expand the U.S. strategic or theater nuclear arsenal,” Mr. Fisher said. “This is a recipe for nuclear coercion, military defeat and watching your kids being drafted to fight future wars of survival.”
A congressional commission on the U.S. strategic posture in a report made public in October made no mention of any new mobile ICBM being prepared by Beijing.
But the report also noted that China “is pursuing a nuclear force build-up on a scale and pace unseen since the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race that ended in the late 1980s,” adding that Beijing is projected to reach parity with the United States in deployed warheads by the mid-2030s.
The Pentagon’s latest annual report on the Chinese military states that the PLA is developing a long-range version of the DF-27 intermediate-range missile that could be a new ICBM. A defense source said that is not the missile Gen. Cotton was referring to as the new mobile ICBM in his closed-door testimony with lawmakers.
Decker Eveleth, a graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California said in a recent report that China‘s nuclear strategy has “emphasized survivability over raw numbers, investing heavily in mobile ICBMs capable of evading an attack and camouflaging their existing DF-5 siloed ballistic missiles with vegetation.”
Mobile ICBMs are kept at a low state of alert in peacetime with warheads separated and stored apart from missiles.
“In a crisis, the PLA would disperse these units to underground facilities hidden throughout the mountainous countryside where they could ride out an attack,” Mr. Eveleth stated. “If a launch order was given by political leadership, missile launchers would then disperse from their underground facilities to pre-surveyed launch points and retaliate.”
The DF-31 is road mobile but can only come within range of the United States from bases near the North Korean border. The DF-41 is the newest and most advanced mobile ICBM and can carry up to three warheads over 8,000 miles. The missile can reach U.S. targets on the East Coast of the United States.
The Pentagon has said the DF-41 may be deployed in the future on a rail-basing mode or in silos, in addition to the road-mobile version.
“The dramatic multiplication in missile forces, both in terms of those missiles capable of reaching the United States, and those missiles that offer China new capabilities in a regional war, have serious implications for the strategic balance in East Asia as well as the future direction of China’s nuclear posture,” Mr. Eveleth wrote.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.