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I have now had several conversations about China’s newest cruise missile, the DH-10.

The conversations all stem from the fact that people mistakenly believe that the 2008 edition of Chinese Military Power indicates the PLA deploys the DH-10 armed with nuclear weapons.

What Chinese Military Power says, as far as I can tell, is that the DH-10 is nuclear-capable, but — for the moment — conventionally-armed. The other, mistaken interpretation, derives from this paragraph, which notes the implications of nuclear-armed Chinese cruise missiles:

New air- and ground-launched cruise missiles that could perform nuclear missions would similarly improve the survivability, flexibility, and effectiveness of China’s nuclear forces.

Now, I see why one might read that to say that the missiles are not just nuclear-capable, but nuclear-armed. But the language is could and would, not do and will.

For the time being, CMP lists the DH-10 under “Building Capacity for Conventional Precision Strike” and on the map for “Regional Conventional Missiles” — my emphasis, of course.

(What I understand less are the claims that China is placing the DH-10 on bombers. Chinese Military Power very clearly describes the “ground-launched DH-10” cruise missile. As you can see by this picture, which is believed to be a DH-10 prototype, the missile is large and resembles the Tomahawk cruise missile. China is, according to CMP, “upgrading its B-6 bomber fleet … with a new variant which, when operational, will be armed with a new long-range cruise missile” — but this is most likely the air-launched YJ-63 which, according to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in 2006, would be conventionally-armed.)

Ground-launched conventionally-armed cruise missiles are consistent with the general trend in the Second Artillery to emphasize conventionally-armed missiles. Other manifestations of this trend are the deployment of large numbers of advanced short-range ballistic missiles near Taiwan and conversion of some DF-21s to a conventional role, including an anti-ship model. I discussed the bureaucratic rationale within the Second Artillery for investing in conventionally-armed ballistic missiles after CCTV spent serious time fawning over late Yang Yegong.

Cruise missiles, in particular, are useful in targeting Taiwanese airbases tucked into the mountains on the far side of the island. (Imagine crouching behind a wall, while someone tries to lob tennis balls at you.) Cruise missiles, of course, can hug terrain and negate such favorable geography.

All of this is really just an elaborate plug for Dennis Gormley’s new book, Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security (Praeger Security International, 2008).

I am going to the book launch on July 24. Be there or be square.

Comment [4]

Dwane Day has had enough of the Pentagon’s Chinese Military Power (CMP) and its slipshod accounting of Chinese military space programs:

The Pentagon report is sloppy, inconsistent, and of limited utility, and as an indicator of what China is planning with its military space program, it should be taken with more than a few grains of salt.

(Although as Noah Shachtman points out, this problem is by no means confined to CMP.)

Day’s insightful, damning and sometimes biting article in The Space Review demonstrates how DoD can try the patience of the serious analyst who dares to sort through the annual word salad on the People’s Republic. In particular, Day tackles something I find particularly vexing — the tendency in Chinese Military Power to make a fantastic claim one year, and then just drop it in subsequent editions with no explanation.

In some cases, DoD stoped making a claim as, I think, a tacit acceptance that the claim was unreliable. For example, CMP stopped mentioning the parasite microsatellite after Gregory Kulacki and David Wright hammered it, But in other cases — like the direct ascent ASAT — the Pentagon dropped the claim even though it had the most solid sort of evidence of a real ASAT capability.

That was particularly irritating during 2006, when the debate about whether the Chinese had lased a US satellite revealed that the intelligence community was focused on a different, unidentified threat that would turn out to be the then-ongoing direct ascent flight tests. I never liked trying to weigh plausible hints from credible colleagues with the official silence in an otherwise alarmist report (and other statements).

***

On a related note, Gregory and I have an article, “Understanding China’s Antisatellite Test,” in the current issue of The Nonproliferation Review (15:2, July 2008, abstract). It is similar to the talk we gave in November 2007. The key argument is:

Our sources also told us that the decision to flight-test the hit-to-kill interceptor was not determined by any particular external event or series of events, but by the maturity of the technology. The project managers were finally ready to test, and one source suggested that they felt pressure to show that they had produced something that worked. Moreover, Chinese scientists and engineers selected the testing mode — as an ASAT as opposed to a missile intercept — largely because it is much easier to hit a satellite than to intercept a missile.

Multiple sources confirm these managers did not make the decision to test by themselves. The decision was carefully vetted, with the full participation of other stakeholders, including representatives of the Foreign Ministry. An internal report laying out the pros and cons worked its way up the bureaucracy for review and comment before finally being put before the ultimate decision makers. Our sources would not say who had the authority to make that final decision or when it was made but indicated that it was not an exceptional process and that standard vetting procedures were followed. They also told us the decision was made relatively close to January 11, 2007, and that there was no dispute among any of the participants from the State, the Party, or the PLA about the legitimacy of the decision.

In the wake of the test many foreign governments criticized the Chinese government for authorizing the test, for not informing them beforehand, for failing to respond to requests for clarification, and for blithely dismissing the potential impacts on the future peaceful use of space. Chinese leaders in both the Foreign Ministry and Central Military Commission have struggled to cope with the intensity of the international reaction and the failure of their subordinates to anticipate and respond effectively to foreign inquiries and concerns, a dysfunction that continued for months. … In retrospect, the Party leadership maintains (and multiple sources confirm as accurate) that the relevant agencies, military and civilian, failed to coordinate well. Somewhere along the line the paper stopped flowing, and responsible individuals at the lower levels of the bureaucracy who had no prior knowledge of the program or the decision to go forward with the test — but who did have responsibility for crafting and delivering the post-test message — never got their instructions.

For more on our November 2007 talk, see my posts: Why’d They Do It?, November 6, 2007; Follow Up on the ASAT Talk, November 16, 2007; and Yes, Virginia, ASATs Are Threatening, November 19, 2007.

Comment [4]

Mark Hibbs, writing in Nucleonics Week (subscription required), points out that that damage to China’s nuclear weapons facilities was slight:

According to local sources, the China Academy of Engineering Physics, CAEP, located in Mianyang, close to the epicenter of the earthquake, was not significantly damaged but six personnel were injured. CAEP is responsible for nuclear weapons production as well as for R&D aspects of China’s nuclear weapons program.

The production reactor and plutonium separation plant at Guangyuan, also located in Sichuan, were shuttered when the earthquake occurred, contrary to some foreign media reports last week, Beijing officials said. The complex, designed to withstand seismic events, was not damaged, they said.

That is consistent with what I, and others, have heard. A colleague sent along pictures of his apartment; it looked like Led Zepplin had stayed the night.

Update: I failed to mention that Mark’s good work leaves me relieved that my semi-informed guess to Bill Broad, “I wouldn’t be surprised if, by and large, they came through pretty well,”, appears to be holding up, so far.

Comment [5]

I spent a few days last summer in Sichuan Province — including Dujiangyan, close to the epicenter of the earthquake, and Mianyang, now the headquarters for the relief effort and also hit very hard.

I still haven’t heard from any of my friends there, which is worrying me.

The pictures from Sichuan are just heartbreaking. I thought I would post a few pictures of Dujiangyan from happier times.

A field along the road from Mianyang to Dujiangyan (above).

The river at Dujiangyan (above).

A bridge across the river at Dujiangyan (above).

Comment [6]

After provocative articles in Foreign Affairs (The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy), International Security (The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy) and The Atlantic (Superiority Complex: Why America’s growing nuclear supremacy may make war with China more likely), Notre Dame’s Keir Lieber and Dartmouth’s Daryl Press are brining their road show to the New America Foundation on Friday at 12:15 to talk whether the US-China nuclear balance is going to be stable or not.

I don’t agree with many (any?) of their conclusions, but they are both smart guys who like a good argument. It should be fun.

You can RSVP online

How Many Nukes Does it Take?
Deterrence Theory and Chinese-U.S. Nuclear Relations

Most scholars and policymakers favor stemming the tide of nuclear proliferation, even as they acknowledge the pacifying effects of established nuclear arsenals on great power relations. When it comes to nuclear arsenals, how robust must a country’s nuclear arsenal be—how much is enough? Some of the key variables in existing studies – e.g., the nuclear “balance of power” – have been poorly conceived, and the data used to measure the nuclear balance and its effect on policy has come from suspect sources. High quality declassified evidence began to percolate just as the Cold War ended and analysts turned their attention to seemingly more important topics.

With an eye toward future potential problems in the U.S.-China relationship, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press will evaluate four major schools of deterrence theory with some of the newly available evidence from the Cold War. Their preliminary findings indicate that we should not be complacent about the deterrent effects of the short-to-medium term nuclear balance between the U.S. and China.

Start: 04/18/2008 – 12:15pm
End: 04/18/2008 – 1:45pm
New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW 7th Floor
Washington, 20009
United States

http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/how_many_nukes_does_it_take

Comment [3]

So say anonymous diplomatic sources to AP reporter George Jahn. Bearing in mind the usual caveats about anonymous sources, this is noteworthy on at least two levels.

First, it is an encouraging sign of China’s (too) slow but promising embrace of the responsibilities that come with being a global power. Remember, Beijing did not participate in NPT negotiations and once denounced the nonproliferation regime on the grounds that it was merely “a conspiracy concocted by the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. to maintain their nuclear monopoly.” This sentiment animated Chinese policy from the 1970s into the early 1990s, when, according to Bates Gill (whose book Rising Star I highly recommend), it actively proliferated to Iran and other countries to “undermine superpower influence while enhancing China’s strategic, political, and economic interests.” Today, however, China is a party to the NPT willing to pass along intel on Iran’s nuclear program!

Second, it further supports my argument from an earlier post that leading powers are not, as some pundits feared, exploiting the controversial U.S. NIE on Iran to avoid responsibility for upholding international nonproliferation norms. Precisely the opposite:

By effectively taking U.S. military action off the table for now, the NIE makes it easier, not harder, for countries like Russia to send Iran a stronger signal about its enrichment program. After all, Russia (and China, for that matter) do not want Iran to develop the capability to deploy nuclear weapons; until the Iran NIE, however, this concern was counterbalanced by a worry that the United States might launch another war in the Middle East.

Now if only CIA Director Hayden would stop second-guessing the judgments of the intelligence professionals…

Update: As many of you know, China has denied this story. The plot thickens…

Comment [30]

I often observe that I am a lousy imagery analyst. Sean O’Connor, it seems to me, is a very, very good one.

After an earlier post on my blog, he’s gone out and, in a very nice piece of research, identified what appears to be the DF-31 deployment area near Nanyang, China:

Nanyang is located in east-central China, approximately 850 kilometers southeast of Beijing and 180 kilometers south of Luoyang. Analysis of the surrounding area has led to the location of six DF-31 launch sites approximately 30 kilometers northwest of Nanyang. The six DF-31 launch sites can be found at the following coordinates:

33°16’33.80“N 112°20’06.49“E
33°14’23.78“N 112°17’50.82“E
33°12’46.96“N 112°18’55.43“E
33°12’02.03“N 112°18’49.17“E
33°09’44.19“N 112°15’47.01“E
33°11’48.95“N 112°18’38.92“E

[snip]

Further evidence that these locations are DF-31 launch positions can be found in the characteristics of the DF-31 TEL itself. The DF-31’s Hanyang HY4301 TEL consists of a missile launch canister mounted on a trailer which is towed by a four axle tractor. This configuration is clearly not off-road capable. That being the case, DF-31 deployed launch sites would have to be near major roads in order to facilitate dispersal of the TELs. This fact, when combined with the information that Brigade 813 is based in Nanyang, supports the conclusion that the sites identified above are in fact DF-31 ICBM launch positions.

There are at least two policy implications of his research, if this is the right area.

• First, the road-mobile DF-31 may not be truly survivable because the launch positions appear to be pre-surveyed. (If you think about inertial guidance, errors in the initial position of the missile will degrade accuracy.)

• Second, Nanyang is located in Central China. It’s 7,250 km range would not be enough to target the continental United States (Even Juneau, Alaska is out of range.)

Comment [14]

I’ve read Chinese Military Power and I don’t agree that it says China increased the size of its nuclear force by 1/3. When I do the math, I get basically 110-160 warheads — about the same size as last year or a little larger depending on how many DF-21s have a nuclear role.

Not that number of warheads is the really interesting information, but I digress.

Before that post, though, something that matters is where the DF-31 is being deployed. I have two hypotheses:

(1) China will deploy the DF-31 to units operating the DF-4, replacing the older missile on a one-to-one basis and keeping a similar force structure.

(2) China will deploy the DF-31 to new units in new places, presumably to cover targets in the US of A.

Of course, one might imagine a combination of (1) and (2), say new DF-31 replaces the DF-4 and new units to operate the DF-31A.

I say all of this to draw your attention to the image at the top of the post.

The image, captioned Fig 3. (S) Probable Launch Crew Training and TEL Checkout at Kangzhuang, is from a classified November 1996 report by NAIC, leaked to Bill Gertz, and published it in the appendix of his book, Betrayal.

NAIC (now NASIC) placed the DF-31 TEL at a place called Kangzhuang (I found it at 40°22’6.16 N, 115°35’51.59 E). As far as I can tell, no one else has linked the DF-31 to Kangzhuang in any other public reports.

I’ve been watching the area in GoogleEarth for a year or so. Today, I notice that GoogleEarth recently replaced some lousy pictures with a lot of very good ones. And there is a lot evidence that Kangzhuang houses a missile base including:

• Two valleys with buildings nestled in them that look very much look like other suspected missile deployment areas (Area 1 and Area 2).

• A surface-to-air missile site at 40°18’10.45“N, 115°38’19.90“E.

• A collection of strange looking buildings (Area 3) that seem military to me.

Anyway, I’ve saved them all in a GoogleEarth file for you.

Then again, I am a lousy overhead analyst. My readers, however, are pretty awesome. Anon nailed the Iranian Space Center at 35°23’20.46 N,53°44’11.05 E and Siwema used ground truth photos to place Egypt’s ETRR-2 at 30° 17’ 34.02 N, 31° 24’ 35.45 E.

Have at it.

Comment [16]

Another picture of China’s new SSBN, this one said to be at Sanya, Hainan Island.

I am psyched! My Nuclear Strategy Initiative is hosting an open-to-the-public roundtable on China’s Boomers: Implications if China’s Deterrent Goes to Sea here at the New America Foundation on Wednesday (January 9 @ 12:15).

We have a great line-up of speakers:

• Christopher Twomey, Assistant Professor and Associate Chair for Research, Department of National Security Affairs and Co-Director, Center for Contemporary Conflict, Naval Postgraduate School

• Andrew Erickson, Assistant Professor, China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI), Strategic Research Department, U.S. Naval War College

• Christopher Yeaw, Associate Professor and Senior Strategic Researcher, U.S. Naval War College

• Michael Glosny, Fellow, John. M Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University

• Michael Gerson, International Affairs Group, Center for Strategic Studies, Center for Naval Analyses

I will be moderating.

Afterwards, please join us for a celebratory happy hour at the Big Hunt (1345 Connecticut Ave. NW), starting around 6 o’clock. Our speakers are attending. Seriously, it is going to be awesome.

(I will also try to finally post the long-awaited third post in my series on China’s SSBN force that began with Will China’s Deterrent Go to Sea? and How Capable is the 094?.)

Comment [21]

Hey, remember that front page Washington Times story by Bill Gertz reporting that “China’s intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service”?

Well, according to Chris Nelson, DoD officials who have read the investigation documents are calling the story “patently false” and “pure crap.”

Here is the full-text of the relevant section from the Nelson Report.

CHINA DOD SPY STORY “PATENTLY FALSE”

DOD/CHINA SPY…dramatic front page story in The Washington Times this morning claims a DOD investigation has revealed Chinese spy penetration thru a “front company” in Hawaii involved in teaching Chinese language.

Informed sources who have read the DOD investigation documents have expressed themselves in the language used in our headline…the follow-on quote actually said “pure c—p”, but we fear for various spam guards, so will be delicate about this.

Informed sources say the DOD investigation found (their paraphrase), “not surprisingly, people involved in Chinese language training do have personal contacts with Chinese from time to time. And it will not surprise you that perhaps a few of these individuals have personal relationships”.

But for the Washington Times version of the DOD report? “Patently false, it’s absolute total c—p. It’s not even close. It’s just not true that there is a PRC ‘front company’ doing translation services in Hawaii…”

OK…guess that clarifies that!

Comment [6]