China is constructing dozens of launch pads for nuclear missiles, latest satellite images show.
Greater than 80 pads have already been constructed in the course of the desert in Xinjiang autonomous province, home to the Uyghur muslim community.
The brand new infrastructure has been built up to now six years inside 150 kilometres of the Hami nuclear silo fields which house China’s longest range missiles, to which they’re linked by airfields and railheads.
At the center of the sprawling network covering 1000’s of square kilometres are octagon structures which contain housing for personnel and huge military vehicles.
Nuclear capable weapons were amongst military hardware on display during a parade in Beijing last September to mark the eightieth anniversary of the tip of the Second World War.
Experts imagine the pads could possibly be used to deploy mobile air-defense missiles, electronic warfare nodes and even mobile ICBM units.
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Alexander Neill, a fellow at Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think tank, said the most recent development was a ‘very considerable enhancement and diversification of China’s strategic nuclear deterrent’.
China has a much smaller stockpile than the world’s two largest nuclear powers, Russia and the US, each of which depend on their relative isolation and sheer numbers of silos to act as a deterrent.
The grand scale of China’s military development shows investment in hardened infrastructure designed to guard and implement the country’s nuclear forces.
In response to Pentagon reports, China is expanding its nuclear capability faster than another nation and, despite a recent slowing in production, is well heading in the right direction to achieve 1,000 warheads by 2030.
It has also been boosting its early warning capability, underpinned by Huoyan-1 satellites, which may detect an incoming ICBM inside 90 seconds of its launch and alert a command centre inside three minutes, giving time for the country to fireside its own weapons before they’re hit.
But despite China’s ‘no first use’ policy, diplomats imagine it can’t be ruled out that Beijing would use nuclear coercion to discourage any possible foreign intervention in Taiwan.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump left the Chinese capital with warnings from president Xi Jinping that disagreements over Taiwan may lead each countries to a ‘dangerous place’.
Hans Kristensen, the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, said ‘it is tough to rule anything out’ when considering how Beijing could deploy its enlarged military capability.
He added that the event in Xinjiang province was an ‘extraordinary effort’.
‘I’ve never seen anything quite prefer it’, he said.
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