China has more than 200 nuclear warheads and about enough fissile material on hand to make at least that many more, according to a report published Tuesday by the Department of Defense.
Doubling that stockpile is exactly what Beijing is likely to do over the next 10 years, the Pentagon stated in the 2020 version of its “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” report: an annual, unclassified delivery to Congress.
The estimated arsenal count is somewhat lower than open-source figures posted regularly online by arms control advocates and Washington, D.C., think-tanks – something that crowd quickly clocked on to, as soon as this year’s report hit the wire.
“One of the most surprising bits is the statement that ‘China probably maintains an operational nuclear warhead stockpile in the low-200s.’” tweeted Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the D.C.-based Federation of American Scientists, and author of the widely read Nuclear Notebooks. “That’s less than the 290 we had [tallied] at the end of 2019.”
One of the most surprising bits is the statement that “China probably maintains an operational nuclear warhead stockpile in the low-200s.” That’s less than the 290 we had at the end of 2019 (the data point for the DOD report). Possible reason: the term “operational.”
— Hans Kristensen (@nukestrat) September 1, 2020
James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said his late-July estimate of China’s fissile material stockpile more or less jibed with the Pentagon’s latest unclassified summary.
The 2020 edition of “Military and Security Developments Involving the PRC” recognizes China’s fissile material will limit any nuclear build up. Its estimate for how many warheads could build is very similar to mine. https://t.co/uMlbPlhlQ7 pic.twitter.com/cD8uCMa4DZ
— (((James Acton))) (@james_acton32) September 1, 2020
“A best estimate for the number of warheads that [China] could produce is about 450,” Acton tweeted on July 29.
The Defense Department did not say exactly how much plutonium it believes China has, nor how much it might produce, or how quickly. It did say, citing an April 2020 State Department report, that “China maintained a high level of activity at its Lop Nur nuclear weapons test site throughout 2019.” Lop Nur is a salt basin in the country’s central desert.
Congress requires DOD to write both a classified and unclassified report on the Chinese military every year.
China’s nuclear arsenal consists of some 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles, both fixed and mobile. That’s on top of lower-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. It also has six ballistic missile submarines capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The introduction of a nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile to the H-6N bomber would give Beijing an air-land-sea nuclear triad, the report says.
The Pentagon also emphasized the danger of China’s plans to bulk up its fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and said that such a development would press the country to develop new warheads.
“The number of warheads on the PRC’s land-based [intercontinental ballistic missiles] capable of threatening the United States is expected to grow to roughly 200 in the next five years,” the report says.
On a list of nuclear-related technology in China’s development pipeline, the report cites: maneuverable re-entry vehicles; multiple independently targetted reentry vehicles; decoys; chaff; jamming; thermal shielding; and hypersonic glide vehicles. According to the report, Beijing says it needs all these things to counter ballistic missile defense, reconaissance, and precision strike systems fielded by the U.S. and others.
The report also warns that China’s DF26 precision strike missile might be a candidate for a low-yield nuclear warhead.
