China Bolsters Its Nuclear Options With New Missile Silos in a Desert
Satellite images of construction could fuel the debate over American nuclear modernization and the future of arms control negotiations.
Researchers in the United States have identified the construction of 119 new intercontinental ballistic missile silos in a desert in northwestern China, indicating that the country is carrying out plans to strengthen its strategic nuclear capability.
The researchers spotted the construction in commercial satellite images of remote areas west and southwest of the city of Yumen, on the edge of the Gobi Desert in Gansu Province.
The images show circular excavations, long trenches for communications and surface structures consistent with control centers and silos at other launch sites in China, according to Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on China’s nuclear program with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif.
The silo construction is likely to fuel debate in Washington over the Pentagon’s plans to modernize the American nuclear arsenal. It may also be driving efforts by the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, to bring China into strategic arms control negotiations that have until now involved only the United States and the Soviet Union and Russia.
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