Analysts Say China is Building a Second Base for Nuclear Missiles
upstart writes:
China is building a 2nd base for nuclear missiles, say analysts:
Analysts at the Federation of American Scientists say China is building a second field of silos for launching nuclear missiles in a development that could constitute the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever".
The United States-based researchers made the discovery after analysing commercial satellite images, and said on Monday that the field - located near the city of Hami in Xinjiang province - may eventually include about 110 silos.
The new field is about 380km (236 miles) from a base near the city of Yumen in neighbouring Gansu province, where a separate group of researchers earlier this month found construction under way on 120 missile silos.
Altogether, the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force now appears to have 250 silos under construction at Hami, Yumen, as well as at a training ground near the city of Jilantai in Inner Mongolia, wrote the FAS's Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen.
[...] The number of new Chinese silos under construction exceeds the number of silo-based ICBMs operated by Russia, and constitutes more than half of the size of the entire US ICBM force," they wrote. The Chinese missile silo program constitutes the most extensive silo construction since the US and Soviet missile silo construction during the Cold War."
However, they stressed that it was unclear how China would operate the new silos, whether it would load all of them with missiles or use a portion as empty decoys. They also noted it was not known how many warheads each missile would carry.
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