Posted on 05/21/2016 10:03:21 PM PDT by Sawdring
The Pentagon’s latest annual report on Chinese military developments mainly deals with non-nuclear issues, but it also contains important new information about developments in China’s nuclear forces. This includes:
The size of China’s ICBM force has been relatively stable over the past five years China has deployed a new version of a medium-range ballistic missile A new intermediate-range ballistic missile is not yet deployed China’s SSBN fleet has yet to conduct its first deterrent patrol The possibility of nuclear capability for Chinese bombers Changes (or not) to Chinese nuclear policy ICBM Developments
The future development of China’s ICBM force has been the subject of much speculation and projections over the years. Despite important new developments, this year’s report describes the size of the ICBM force as consistent with the force level reported over the past five years: around 60 launchers. Fielding of the DF-31 appears to have stalled and the data suggests that fielding of the DF-31A has been modest: so far about 20-30 launchers, enough for perhaps 4-5 brigades (see graph).
In 2012, the DOD report predicted that by 2015, “China will also field additional road-mobile DF-31A” launchers. But that doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead, the ICBM launcher force has remained relatively stable since 2011.
The number of Ichina-icbm-nosCBM launchers reported by the annual DOD reports over the past 13 years has fluctuated considerably, from around 30 in 2003 to 50 to 60-plus launchers in 2008 and later years. The uncertainty has been greatest in 2011-2013 and 2016 with a plus/minus of 25 launchers. That’s a significant uncertainty of approximately 40 percent in recent years versus around 10 percent in earlier years. But it seems clear that the Chinese ICBM forces is so far not continuing to grow.
(Excerpt) Read more at fas.org ...
I don’t believe it. They have all that money and a huge military build up, they are developing new ICBMs and they aren’t increasing their forces? Bravo Sierra.
These are our “trade partners” who enjoy “most favored nation” status with the United States.
They wouldn’t have the money to do this crap if we didn’t hand over our economy to them.
So where are the Free Traitors to lecture us about the “benefits” of cheep stuff from this monoethnic hate state?
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