Posted on 10/14/2011 9:51:33 PM PDT by traumer
A leading US lawmaker who fears budget cuts could delay modernizing the US nuclear arsenal voiced concern Friday about an extensive tunnel complex designed to house Chinese nuclear missiles. "This network of tunnels could be in excess of 5,000 kilometers (3,110 miles), and is used to transport nuclear weapons and forces," said Michael Turner, who chairs a House Armed Services Committee panel focusing on strategic weapons and other security programs.
"As we strive to make our nuclear forces more transparent, China is building this underground tunnel system to make its nuclear forces even more opaque," he added, citing an unclassified Department of Defense report.
Experts also expressed their concern about the network, whose existence was revealed by official Chinese media in late 2009.
The tunnels would allow China to launch a nuclear counter-attack if it was hit by a nuclear strike. "It's almost mind-boggling," said Mark Schneider, senior analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy.
"It has enormous implications in terms of their view toward nuclear warfare, survivability of their systems and their leadership in the event of war.
"It is virtually impossible to target anything like that, irrespective of how many nuclear weapons you have," he added.
Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center said the tunnel complex could allow the Chinese army to conceal its weapons.
"Do we really know how many missiles the Chinese have today?" he asked.
Turner expressed concern that planned cuts to the Pentagon could block efforts to modernize the US arsenal.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
“Russia and China modernize their nuclear arsenal while we sit back and simply maintain our existing and aging nuclear forces,”
But our current President will not allow us to upgrade our nuclear arsenal, what can we do?
Who hired this numbnut?
During the height of the Cold War we had Minuteman missile siloes scattered around South and North Dakota and Montana to provide a credible deterrent to a first strike by the Soviets. We later learned that the Soviets had dedicated 150 multiple warhead ICBMs to target this missile field alone.
If we wanted to, we could target anything, including this tunnel complex. The only thing lacking is political will.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.