(MENAFN- Live Mint) China is pressing ahead with plans to rapidly upgrade and expand its nuclear weapons arsenal across land, sea and air, according to a new US assessment that offers the most detailed accounting yet of the country's bid to catch up to the US in an area where it lagged.
The Defense Intelligence Agency's report details how China is building up a land-based arsenal involving about 300 missile silos, while also expanding its fleet of road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles and further developing a fleet of bombers that carry air-launched ballistic missiles.
“China is undergoing the most rapid expansion and ambitious modernization of its nuclear forces in history - almost certainly driven by an aim for enduring strategic competition with the US,” the Pentagon's intelligence arm said in its 2024 Nuclear Challenges report. The document also detailed nuclear expansion by Russia and North Korea.
Earlier: Pentagon Sees China Nuclear Arsenal Growing Faster Than Expected
But China drew most of the focus. The Defense Intelligence Agency stuck to an estimate from 2021 that China is building out its arsenal far more quickly than earlier forecast, with a goal of having at least 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, up from 500. By contrast, the US currently has about 3,750 warheads.
The report highlights and updates statistics and conclusions about Chinese, Russian and North Korean nuclear inventories and ambitions. It warns that Russian military weaknesses exposed by the invasion of Ukraine“may increase Moscow's reliance on nuclear capabilities going forward.”
It also says that China and Russia are likely to field weapons that are more accurate and better able to get around missile defenses.
The DIA estimates that most of the growing arsenal is of warheads capable of hitting the continental US and that China“probably also seeks lower-yield nuclear warhead capabilities” for regional use to threaten US forces and allies. For that, Beijing is increasing its stockpile of“theater-range” delivery systems, such as the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, it said.
Updating North Korea's ambitions, the report found that it conducted dozens of missile tests in 2022 and performed drills to simulate the launching of nuclear weapons in a move to intimidate the US and its allies.
Kim Jong Un's regime“has demonstrated the capability to produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium, has conducted nuclear tests and has developed new ballistic missile systems intended to strike regional and continental US targets,” DIA said.
On Iran, the DIA assessed that the country still doesn't have nuclear weapons and has agreed not to seek them. Even so, it's building a civilian nuclear program that will be able to“build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons following a decision to do so.”
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