China’s HQ-19 Hit-to-Kill Interceptor

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Foreign Ministry. What? You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Scott LaFoy 0:24

And I'm Scott LaFoy, a master's candidate at Georgetown University, imagery analyst, and the producer for the Arms Control Wonk Podcast.

Jeffrey 0:31

Scott, you're not Aaron. I'm not.

Scott 0:34

I'm subbing in for Aaron today. You're going to start a podcast, though, so this is a chance to plug it. Dave Schmerler and I are working on an open source imagery analysis podcast. So anyone who's interested in sort of like how that works, what we're looking at, what it's like to stay up till, you know, 3 a.m. on the East Coast trying to wait for...

Korean Central Television to show new pictures of their Scuds, and then how we track them down, how we find them, and how we tell what kind of missiles they are would be remiss to miss our upcoming podcast coming up in the next few weeks. Yeah, so I thought we'd do kind of a version of that, and we do it on China's missile defense program because you do China, I do China, we do, we both do China.

We do. We both do China, we both do Korea. It's a great neighborhood for missile analysis.

Jeffrey 1:21

Ah, because there are lots of missiles and now missile defenses. There are these videos. How many videos or versions of this video do you count showing a series of their tests of this alleged missile defense system?

Scott 1:34

At least four now.

Jeffrey 1:35

Yeah, so we... Listeners, we sat down and we watched all of them and we pulled out a few interesting tidbits because it is just kind of crazy that this program, which generally had been shrouded in secrecy to develop a hit-to-kill interceptor which can bust satellites or missiles. Suddenly the Chinese are showing video after video, and it's useful both because we can start to assess the interceptor, but we can start to assess claims about the intercept geometries, and I think we can do a little bit of geolocation.

Could do a lot of geolocation on it. It's a pretty nice set of videos, in fact. Do you want to start with the target or the interceptor?

Scott 2:21

Let's start with the exciting part. Let's start with the Interceptor.

Jeffrey 2:25

Yeah, so it looks like a DF-15 to me. Is that what you make it out to be?

Scott 2:30

It does. It looks like a DF-15, specifically looks like a DF-15B or maybe C in some of the other videos. But probably a DF-15B in the 2000, what we think is the 2010 video? Yeah.

Jeffrey 2:46

Right. So this, and I take it, the thing that you're focusing is the same thing I'm on, which is it's got this sort of elongated, slender warhead or kill vehicle with the tiny little fins on it.

Scott 2:59

Right. And that's, for the listeners, that's the difference between, the visual difference between the B and the C is the DF-15B has little fins on the front and the DF-15C looks like a crayon.

Jeffrey 3:09

And it has the same launcher, i.e. The truck that, like, carries it around. Right.

Scott 3:14

Right. Same launcher and same body. Scott, did you see?

Jeffrey 3:17

So one of the things Scott and I did is we looked at these things frame by frame. What was with the tape on the side?

Scott 3:25

Yeah, it's like everything's taped up and there's lots of plastic wrap. It's like they just rolled out the brand new model of it and they don't want to take it off because it looks so nice with the plastic on. And you know when you pull it off, it's not going to be scratched or anything.

Jeffrey 3:39

Yeah, it's like when they erect the missile, it has this... I mean, I guess it's an environmental covering, but it is like... It's not really saran-wrapped. It's like a really form-fitting garbage bag-like material, right? It's wide and thin. I've actually seen that material on U.S. nuclear warheads.

Scott 4:00

Interesting.

Jeffrey 4:00

Yeah, the same kind of thin... I suppose it's to keep out dust and other things that would screw with your fancy electronics.

Scott 4:08

Which, there's a lot of dust out at Korla, where they launch that interceptor.

Jeffrey 4:12

Oh yeah, Xinjiang is full of dust and sand. So, one question that I had, which I thought was interesting, is the videos have a designation. So they call it the HQ19. That's right. Yeah, it's weird because we designate the... We call the thing the SC-19, but SC is Shuangchengzi, which is our name for their Jochuan Missile Launch Center, which is actually where they usually fire the target, right?

So I guess this means we first saw it there?

Scott 4:45

That's what it would indicate, just like the Musudan and the Rodong or the Nodong. In North Korea, we tend to name the missiles after where we see them. Do you think it's weird it has the same number? I do. We are so different from the Chinese numbering practices. It's just like hell of a coincidence, right? Yeah, it's very weird that they finally converged.

Jeffrey 5:11

So here is my big question for you. So they show us an interceptor that looks like a DF-15. Right. I think it probably... Is, you know, it's probably based on a DF-15, and I assume it's got enough range. You know, DF-15s, I don't know, that's not, well, I don't know, you know, the DF-15 has, you know, like a sort of, you know, like...

Scott 5:39

800, 900 kilometer range, I guess, which is enough to get it into space and simulate, I don't know offhand, what the speed it would be at its apogee, but that's enough to at least get it outside of the atmosphere, unlike firing, you know, a Scud or like a, you know, 300 kilometer range missile which would not be able to actually, you know, break super high for like a mid-course defense test. You couldn't do with a 300 range, 300 kilometer range missile, I don't think.

Jeffrey 6:04

Yeah. And I mean, it'll have a kill vehicle on it. And so that'll substantially reduce the weight of the payload. Yeah. So it's not carrying around like 2,000 pounds of high explosives. It's going to be carrying a little light kill vehicle. So I guess that's interesting because we all wondered. I think our early speculation was that it was a DF-21.

Scott 6:22

Right. And that's what I thought originally, too.

Jeffrey 6:24

But that's not what they're showing us. No. So I guess we're going to revise our judgment. Yeah. I think the target piece is interesting, though, and maybe you don't want to touch this, but because I look at the target, and to me it looks like a DF-11, and I can't tell how much of that is stock footage.

Scott 6:47

Yeah, this gets into kind of like my specific like obsession with CCTV. I used to track a lot of on the ground imagery for China, seeing what CCTV would show. And so I have kind of like the B-roll stock footage archive equivalent for CCTV missile footage. And some of the shots they show of what they are kind of telegraphing to be the target are definitely DF-11s.

But some of it is stock footage that we've seen in other CCTV broadcasts about training exercises.

Jeffrey 7:22

Well, and what I thought was interesting was shortly after the, I think it was the 2010 missile defense test, there are cables that got released, thanks to WikiLeaks, that describe the geometry of the test. And so they said that it was an SC-19 interceptor out of Korla. And we'll talk about the location. But, you know, we're going to assume that the SC-19 is a variant of the DF-15.

And they said it was fired against a CSS 11, which would be a DF-16, which is kind of like a souped-up DF-11?

Scott 8:02

Yeah, longer range. I think longer range than the 15's even supposed to have, if I remember correctly. It's supposed to be like the next... Well, yeah, comparable.

Jeffrey 8:13

Comparable, yeah. Yeah. Longer range than old 15s, not longer range than new 15s.

Scott 8:19

Fair enough. That is true. But it's supposed to be like kind of the next generation SRBM. You know what? I have that wrong. The 15 mod... Now, careful with using mod on the 15s, because the 15 mods are not in the same order as the TF-15 letters. I know. That is so confusing to me. It is. Everything about NATO designations for Chinese missiles is a little frustrating.

Jeffrey 8:45

So what we call the Mod 2 has a longer range than the Mod 1, but a shorter range than the Mod 3.

Scott 8:52

Right, because the Mod 3 is what the Chinese would call, I believe, the DF-15B.

Jeffrey 8:59

Yes, that's what I have. Which is the one with the fins, again, for reference. Listeners' ears are bleeding right now.

Scott 9:05

This is worse than describing, like, agencies interacting for alphabet soup. It's alphanumeric soup.

Jeffrey 9:11

So they fired a 15 at an either 11 or 16. Right. The U.S. has said it was a 16, but they show us maybe stock footage of 11, maybe real footage of 11. Maybe they're externally identical. We don't know.

Scott 9:27

Is that a good way to say that? Yeah, it's hard to tell from the imagery, hard to negate, hard to confirm. Well, and it doesn't help, right, that some of the videos have footage of the SM3, the US system? Oh, yeah. It's not only Chinese stock footage. It is Raytheon advertisements that are posted on YouTube.

Jeffrey 9:48

It's just totally shameless, right?

Scott 9:50

Yeah, it's just entirely not a Chinese intercept at all.

Jeffrey 9:54

Yeah, well, in some of the, I mean, the Raytheon footage, it's not really footage, right? It's an animation.

Scott 9:59

Yeah, it's a 3D-generated thing. Oh, gosh, all right. Well, okay.

Jeffrey 10:03

All right, so it's wild that we can see that the SC-19 is a DF-15. That alone is pretty cool. Right. We find, I think, reasonable confirmation of the U.S. claim that they fired it against a DF-16. Which is to say that, yeah, it's probably stock footage, but it's kind of the same. Even though they have different designations, it's the same family, right?

Scott 10:26

It's the same family, and that's at least what they're telegraphing via video, is they're trying to imply that it's, you know, this 11 or 16.

Jeffrey 10:34

And, you know, I mean, what's interesting about this to me is, and we've had this conversation off the pod, but the Chinese are testing this as a missile defense system.

Scott 10:43

Right.

Jeffrey 10:45

But it is a hit-to-kill system.

Scott 10:47

And a mid-course hit-to-kill system, according to their videos.

Jeffrey 10:50

Can totally kill satellites. It can totally kill missiles. What you choose to do with it is your choice. It's not an issue of the underlying technology.

Scott 10:59

Exactly. When the U.S. did a comparable test, we used the Aegis SM-3, which is advertised as a mid-course BMD hit-to-kill system. So advertised a very similar way to what CCTV is advertising, and just via a software change. So no reconfiguration of hardware. Blew out a satellite in Operation Burnt Frost. Yes.

Jeffrey 11:24

One of our listeners' fathers participated in that. I'll keep him anonymous, but hey, man. Actually, I remember I was, oh, I don't know if I want to say, I was living in the same city with that person when his dad was dealing with that. And, yeah, they were stressed out. So this is wild. Like, we got a picture of the thing.

And we got some pictures. We can talk about where they launch it.

Scott 11:58

Yeah, so let's talk about Korla. Korla Test and Law. What's the official name for Korla that we use?

Jeffrey 12:04

So I have never heard a Chinese name, and in fact, I had never heard in the U.S. intelligence community the identification of it until that WikiLeaks cable came out, and it said, Korla Missile Test Complex. And I was like, wait, what? Yeah, that's a new thing for us to use because I've heard Korla for years, which is also, I mean, Chinese-speaking listeners are probably like losing their minds right now, that's not how you say it in Chinese. We know it's hard. I can't, I can't do the Korla. Yeah, I think it's Carla. Carla. I'm not good at Chinese. I'm worse. Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to, tried to go to the Foreign Ministry?

No. I got in the taxi. And, you know, like, my Chinese is just good enough that I can get myself into, like, serious trouble. Uh-huh. Which is a whole other set of funny stories. But I tell the guy, like, I want to go to the foreign ministry. And he's like, what? I'm like, the foreign ministry. He's like, What and i mean i mean we just like i'm like trying like i'm like swapping all the tones i'm just i'm i'm doing everything i possibly can to make it work and finally i'm like do you know who li zhao xing is and i apparently could do those tones at the time right and he was like yeah he's the foreign minister i can't wait he works he's like oh the foreign ministry he said oh the foreign ministry why didn't you say so

Scott 13:29

Just cut me some slack, man.

Jeffrey 13:31

Yeah, man, I'm a foreigner. Your language is hard. It's awesome, but it's hard. Just take me to the foreign ministry. And then he did, and it was fine. Oh, gosh. So, yeah, so we got super interested. And I have to give credit where it's due. Some Chinese or at least Chinese language people. Bloggers had noted that there was this little site to the southwest of Corolla, and that's the one that we ID'd as the test site.

But you want to make me do my due diligence on that, right?

Scott 14:05

That's right. There's a little bit of weirdness around Corolla in general, which is used to test a number of systems. It's not just an ASAT ground, because just north of there is a A huge line of ballistic missile test sites, some satellite calibration sites, and what else?

Jeffrey 14:26

Yeah. Well, and what else, though? That's the question, right? Because we don't... Do we agree on what that thing is?

Scott 14:34

I'm not sure anyone... Totally agrees with enough certainty that they are, you know, 100% set. There is a mysterious weapons test and weapons effect range nearby.

Jeffrey 14:46

So let's do it this way. Let's talk about the base. Let's talk about the place I think they do the KEA. I can't call it the KEA set. The SC-19. No, it has a designation now. The HQ-19. Right. So we'll talk about the main base. We'll talk about the place where we think they do the HQ-19 testing, or at least where I do and why I think that's the spot.

We'll talk about that weird site. Yeah and, and then maybe a couple other things. So we ID'd this one place, and then Ian Johnston whose Chinese is not terrible unlike mine said, hey, did you know that there is an alumni video for that unit in Korla?

Scott 15:30

No way.

Jeffrey 15:31

Yeah.

Scott 15:32

Oh, I love this.

Jeffrey 15:34

So this is my favorite open source technique for Chinese military units, which is they all do alumni videos.

Scott 15:43

Oh, I think I've heard you talk about these before. Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:47

And the Corolla one is amazing. And it had all kinds of pictures of the buildings at the base. But it also showed them, which was kind of fun, the buses going in and out of the base, taking them to and from the train station, like when they arrived and when they left. Right. Because like that's part of the natural narrative.

So in Korla City, we were able to identify the main general armaments department base that we think oversees a lot of these testing activities at these, for lack of a better term, satellite bases around satellite like. Not satellite-like space, although some of them do deal with satellites in space, but satellite-like distributed. But what's really cool about that, and a lot of these guys, they take selfies.

And so the selfies are all posed in front of the buildings. And, like, I'm, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure your wife thinks you're very handsome, but, like, get out of the way. I need to see the building behind you. Yeah. But what the best part was when we found the base, you look at the front gate and you can see there's a darkened area on the road where the buses turn in and out because they're always going the same place.

Like leaving the base, they turn left, not right. Because you turn left to go to the train station.

Scott 17:08

I'm looking at it now. You can see the turn off very clearly. Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:12

And then, you know, you look at the video and you see the buses turning left. You're staring. They're turning right to you, but left out of the base. So that was great. But what was great was it was an alumni group that was there during the construction of... The thing where we think they test the sc19 so we got to see not only construction shots of them building it right because it's a couple kilometers to the south right southeast but then they took selfies in front of all the buildings Which is just thanks for building it and then mapping it for us. I, I mean, like, you couldn't do any better because when you get at the end, you're like, okay, well, here are pictures of the GAD base in town, right, and, and all kinds of stuff like they're doing like a balloon blowing competition, but you can see like the unit insignias on them so like I have your unit number.

And your unit number tells me you are subordinate to the unit that's based at the Jochuan site where the targets are being launched. And then I not only have pictures of you at the main base, I now have pictures of you building this base down here, which helps me, in addition to satellite photographs, pin down that you built this base precisely to take the SC-19, which had initially been tested in anti-satellite mode, move it out to Korla, and start testing it in a missile defense mode.

Scott 18:42

Someone is so getting fired.

Jeffrey 18:44

I mean, it's so fantastic. I mean, it's fantastic. And I know they're subordinate to the General Armaments Department. Well, the former. The late General Armaments Department. Since it's been... Well, I can't tell if it's been demoted or not. But that entity still controls this base.

Scott 19:07

But you say there's some skepticism about our ID. There's a little weirdness in some of the videos, and we were talking about this a little off-pod, but just matching in some of the launches of the Interceptors. Yeah, go ahead. Let me walk this back first. For the listeners, the videos are frequently undated. And so we have to figure out from their release dates whether or not those release dates actually coincide with a specific test that's either discussed in the video or timely enough to be estimated.

So we're already divorced from an actual hard timeline because it's not like we're getting metadata from CCTV. Right.

Jeffrey 19:51

So let me tell you why we think the site we identified is where they're doing the SC-19 or HQ-19 testing.

Scott 19:58

Go for it because it's a good argument. Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:01

No, I'm not feeling bad. First of all, it looks like... Such a test site, which is to say there is an administrative area, right, which is not normally staffed. And then it has a launch pad with a checkout building. And we have seen before they built the checkout building to hide crap. We've seen lots of the right kind of transporter erector launchers at the site.

But it also has instrumentation. Right. And if you look at the surface-to-air missile test range at Jochuan, which we will talk about at the end of the pod, that instrumentation, it's a very distinctive kind of instrumentation. So, you know, it really looks like something is being launched out of here in a surface to air missile mode, whether it's, you know, whether air is a weird term surface to surface to up there.

Right. Whether it's space or air. And so it fit the bill. And so our question was, well, let's do an experiment. So we had the dates of all the alleged missile defense tests out of Korla. And it turns out that Digital Globe had images from one of the tests, from the day of one of the tests. And it was, fortunately, the Chinese did a bunch of these tests in January, which, like, what a freaking miserable assignment.

Hi, I want you to go out into the Gobi Desert in January. It's like, okay.

Scott 21:43

Quick editor's note, we know it's not the Gobi Desert. It's the Taklamakan Desert.

Jeffrey 21:48

And it's snow covered. Right. Which is important for when we talk about the videos later. Right. So on the day of the test, even though it is snow covered, the pad is plowed. Right. And the instrumentation sites have instrumentation installed in them. And the administrative base is busy.

Scott 22:18

Right. All evidenced by, you know, you can see very clearly when you see people move through snow. They leave a lot of tracks, especially when it's heavy vehicles.

Jeffrey 22:28

Right. So we felt really good. I mean, obviously, I would like to be able to get images of Korla on the day of tests every day. But, you know, it's already, I think, it would be a pretty damn big coincidence if there just happened to be a test out of this site on the same snowy day that there was a test out of another site nearby.

Scott 23:06

That would be a pretty big coincidence. And that's a pretty good argument for that site.

Jeffrey 23:11

And then on top of it, you know, we... I don't know. It's hard to say because it's just the frickin' desert. Yeah. But the pad is a pretty good match for the pad that we see the test being conducted in. Which is to say, it's a bare concrete pad, not really surrounded by much... Except for some poles and some very small structures.

And, you know, we can't tell the dates of everything and there's a lot of construction. So the pole, well, not the poles, but the structures move a little bit cause there's that new checkout building. But I generally think visually it's a good although not decisive match for the place we see the stuff being launched out. So I think that's the site But I don't know.

Scott 24:02

Have I succeeded in persuading you? My job is to be a wet blanket. I literally ain't no team but red team. And so I am the perennial enemy of good arguments. That's great. So hit me. One of the big problems, and this is something that people... Who have a very generous belief in the cogency and strategic planning of Chinese propaganda forces, believe that videos are released with some intention of creating confusion and obscuring actual pieces of data while releasing what they want.

So it's a little hard to tell for when I was tracking them. For listeners, this timeline may get a little confusing. It's confusing for me. And this isn't a counter argument that it's another site necessarily. It's just that a lot of the videos are inconsistent and are maybe intentionally inconsistently presented to make it difficult to confirm or like really confidently identify sites, at least from my end.

So January 2013, there is snow on the ground at the Corolla test site, potential test site. Satellite imagery confirms it's in snow. But one of the big problems is there are no videos of interceptor launches in snow. So we don't have any on-the-ground imagery that can be tracked to that specific launch. Right.

Jeffrey 25:31

But the videos that we look at, some of which are of dubious provenance, show what purport to be 13 launches. And it's not clear if there's snow or not. Or rather, I would say it would seem that they would seem to imply that there is not snow.

Scott 25:53

Right, they look pretty normal desert-y.

Jeffrey 25:56

And so they may be from a different time?

Scott 26:01

But it's still cold in all those videos, because they've all got their... Coats on. Yeah, coats on and their Soviet fluffy hats on. Yep. So it's still cold, and all the ASAT tests that I'm aware of happen in cold months with maybe the exception of 2014? Yeah.

Jeffrey 26:19

Yeah, I think there is one summer test that we know about. Is it July 14 or 15? I can't remember.

Scott 26:26

It's one of those.

Jeffrey 26:27

You would think that I would be responsible enough to actually write this down.

Scott 26:31

Well, we're not talking about that one, so the listeners can... You can take our word on it. It's 14 or 15, and it was warmer than the video would show. So it's a little bit of a missile. I mean... It's a little bit of a mystery, this Mizzle. But one interesting thing is it can't be the 2015 imagery because...

So this video of The Intercept was released this year to much fanfare on various sites of China releases its first hit-to-kill Intercept video. Couldn't have come from 2015 because when we go into Scott LaFoy's archive of B footage, we can find that the video they showed this year was mixed in with imagery from 2013. Of radar vans and a DF-15B looking tell going out into Corolla and performing a launch and these are the radar vans that if you go into Google Earth, yeah, are at the Corolla test site you described previously, right? So it is absolutely the case that we are, ah.

Jeffrey 27:38

What's the right word? Curious about the dates, times, locations of the videos. The videos are the videos are an unreliable narrator.

Scott 27:54

Right, and that's sort of the like should be the byline for Rocket Force and Second Artillery video on CCTV, yeah, is that they're going to be mixed in with a bunch of stock footage and like we were talking about for the target vehicle which looks like a DF-11 or DF-16, they like to show off a very specific shot of a DF-11 being put upright at golden hour, like it's very pretty. The photographer clearly planned it very well, and they show that in.

Everything it's a really common video but they're using it to imply an intercept where they use that same video to imply an offensive ballistic missile test you know a year earlier so we're getting mash Karov cut on this a little bit maybe a little so I still I still like my site so there's this other site which we should talk about because the thing is Corley is like in addition to having an enormous amount of really weird industry and

Jeffrey 28:53

Yeah, it's got a lot of military, yeah, and it's, you know, so there's a, there's a, there's a radar there is which helps us, I mean, we already knew there was something in Corolla anyway, but like the radar tells us that yes, they are doing missile tests somewhere out of Corolla, but then there's this other site which I guess what I would say is what just do east of of Corolla.

Scott 29:21

Yeah, and very slightly to the north. And that's a weird one, too? It's the weirdest, because the Corolla, so the first Corolla site... Like you said, it fits a lot of the stuff. It checks a lot of the boxes for being a good ASAT test site. I don't know what boxes are being checked by this other site.

It is strange. It's so many things.

Jeffrey 29:49

So some people think that this might be the missile defense. I need to call it the HQ-19. The HQ-19 site, right? Yeah. Right. And Sean O'Connor, six or seven years ago, thought it might be a directed energy site for blinding satellites.

Scott 30:11

Yeah, which has happened a couple times. The DOD has claimed that a couple satellites have been illuminated.

Jeffrey 30:18

Illuminated.

Scott 30:20

Yeah, not quite dazzled. Right. On the spectrum of tagged, illuminated, to dazzled, the most fabulous operational spectrum available. Yeah, they were pretty annoyed by it. Yeah, so they said they basically had been hit, but not quite dazzled. You know, damaged or disabled by, I don't think so damaged or disabled by directed energy weapons out of somewhere in the West is what they said you know, years ago.

So people keep an eye out for directed energy weapons in roughly this area.

Jeffrey 30:53

Yeah. And so it's a, I mean, it's a weird looking site and it's gotten bigger.

Scott 30:58

Yeah, it's expanded a lot. Yeah.

Jeffrey 31:00

So I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I have always just assumed that Sean's ID was right, but I don't actually have any basis to make that assumption. I don't know what the hell that thing is.

Scott 31:20

Yeah, and I feel like, you know, assuming Sean is right gets you through a lot of good stuff. That's not a bad assumption to make most of the time. But it's, you know, that also assumption was, you know, 10 years ago? Yeah. Based on imagery from 10 years ago. And before they started...

Jeffrey 31:39

Missile defense testing or HQ-19 testing. So we didn't have that as a plausible hypothesis at that point because they hadn't fired anything that had been in the news. They probably had fired some things.

Scott 31:53

Even if he is spot on, so much has changed since then that we are no longer spot on. Now it's – It's back to what are all these buildings that can move left and right arbitrarily, and what is this strange star-shaped formation out in the desert? Oh, yeah, that star formation is weird.

Jeffrey 32:13

You know, we'll post pictures of this online, and we'll crowdsource this, because we're all wondering just what the hell we're looking at.

Scott 32:20

So one thing we did was we had David Wright.

Jeffrey 32:25

So Korla, we know the interceptors are coming from somewhere near Korla, right? I've got my spot. But we know that there is a missile test complex at Korla and that that's where the interceptors are fired out of. The targets come out of Jochuan, which is also the mother base to the Korla site. And we can tell that because of the – like all military organizations, the Chinese take the numerical numbering of their bases very seriously.

Right. And they've given the Korla base a number that indicates it's subordinate to Jo Joann. That's where we think the targets are coming out of which would be consistent also with historically there's a lot of testing and targets coming out of there right well so joe chuan which when you know the first of all screw the chinese for naming it joe chuan it's not anywhere near the urban area that we refer to as joe chuan you know it is yeah it is let me let me measure it 200 kilometers?

Yep. Which is the same thing they do with Taiwan.

Scott 33:30

Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 33:31

It's a four-hour bus ride from Taiwan to, like, yeah.

Scott 33:38

But it also speaks to the level of development in that region, that that's still the closest major city.

Jeffrey 33:45

Yeah.

Scott 33:46

It's really out there.

Jeffrey 33:48

So we, the U.S. intelligence community, calls it Shuangchengzi, right? Which is actually where SC-19 comes from, the SC. Mm-hmm. But I'll just call it Jiuquan because, you know, what the hell. Yeah. You know, this comes up in my class. Yeah? Yeah. There is a beautiful declassified document of the missile test site at Shuangchunzi from the late 1950s.

Right. It is laid out exactly the same way today.

Scott 34:28

I was going to say, I think I either have the same document or the same series because they do these great aerial photography of it, and it just lines up really perfectly, even with old air defense sites out there because that's also where they tested a bunch of their air defense missiles.

Jeffrey 34:44

Yeah. So the so the main base is still the main base. They have added the Space Launch Center for the space, particularly the human space launch program. And that's new. Right. The the the site for testing surface to air missiles is exactly the same and is still there. It's gotten bigger. It looks, by the way, it looks exactly like a Soviet one because that's the military.

But the pads at which they test the military missiles out into the desert are in exactly the same location. And Scott, this is going to be so fun. So I always make this point as I'm teaching the students this because I want to make the argument to them that like, look, you know, I'm teaching about China's program in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s.

And you feel like that maybe is forever ago because you're a student. And so you weren't even born then. But those are the same sites. They haven't moved. And so... Look at the launch pads where they do the missile testing. I sent you that lat long.

Scott 35:49

Hey.

Jeffrey 35:49

Do you see what's on the pad? So you want to orient that right, right? Yeah. And zoom in. Is that not the clearest picture? So, listeners, there is a satellite picture in Google Earth that is a beautiful picture. Beautiful shot of what I think is... I think that's a 16. I think that's a DF-16.

Scott 36:16

That was my first thought on that. It's about like a 12. I'm sure the listeners are loving us describing pictures and measurements to them.

Jeffrey 36:25

But it's so clear you can see... You can see the missile. I think that's the cover, not the missile itself. Yeah, it's a cover. And you can see the cab. And you can see the railing along the side. And the people viewing it. And the shadows of the human being standing around it. That's right. It is the clearest picture I've ever seen.

And so here it is. The reason I think that this is so cool is look at the date on the photograph. Right, so it appears to be October 2014. Right, that is before they paraded it. Right. So in a satellite image, you could get a really accurate image of one of their, I mean, it is discernibly a missile transporter.

Scott 37:08

Oh, like unambiguously.

Jeffrey 37:10

Yeah, and you could know how big it was, right, how long it is, how wide it is, before they paraded it.

Scott 37:18

I think that's crazy.

Jeffrey 37:19

Like, what a weird world we live in, right? That if you had made the effort to follow that site in satellite images, you would have seen the missiles before the public did. Like, you can truly do that on an open source basis now. Isn't that an amazingly clear shot of a DF-16?

Scott 37:42

That's incredible. This is something that in the 70s would have to be declassified, I think, tomorrow, based on declassification practices. That's incredible.

Jeffrey 37:53

So, one more little experiment. You can see which way it's oriented, right? Right.

Scott 38:04

Yes, it appears to be facing the southwest.

Jeffrey 38:08

Yeah, so draw a line.

Scott 38:12

Let's see, it's a heading of 217.20 degrees. Oh, hey, that's going to be interesting.

Jeffrey 38:20

I know, isn't it?

Scott 38:21

So that would be, at least from what I'm looking at, that looks like it's perpendicular to Korla. Yeah, uh-huh.

Jeffrey 38:31

So I think that's too far to be for a missile defense test. Right? Right. Right? So I think, first of all, I think that's a really cool thing. That, like, one of the questions I had was, was that a missile defense test that we missed? And I think the answer is no, because it's not pointed in the right direction.

Scott 38:52

So let's unpack that a little bit then.

Jeffrey 38:53

Yeah.

Scott 38:54

What, what you mean by that? Cause that's a complex statement there.

Jeffrey 38:59

So, so missiles, right. So I think this is and I don't actually understand why this is true, but missiles need to go in the direction that the truck is pointed.

Scott 39:08

Yep. And that goes back to the old, the oldest scuds in the world all did that. Yeah. And so when I saw a DF 16, what I, or I'm sorry,

Jeffrey 39:20

When I saw what I thought was a DF-16 sitting on the pad, I wondered if this DF-16 was sitting there as a DF-16 test or if it was just sitting there for a regular old DF-16 test. And so what I wanted to do was to see if there were any reports of tests at Korla on that date, and there were not.

But then it turns out there were no reports of any tests on that date, so it just didn't make the news. And so I ran the heading out, and it's perfectly perpendicular. Well, I shouldn't say perfectly, but yeah, like you say, perpendicular.

Scott 40:05

Pretty darn perpendicular.

Jeffrey 40:09

So I was pretty sure they weren't shooting it at Korla to get intercepted. Right. Cause the Corolla interceptor would have to be chasing its tail. It would be not possible. Yeah. And so it was like, Oh wow, look at that. That probably is like, you can even tell just from the way it's set up and the way their test infrastructure is put together.

And from all of the mapping tools, like, Oh yeah, that's probably just a straight up DF 16 test. Right. Which is amazing. If you think about it, like, you know, the heading for Corolla, if you got satellite pictures every day and you got a picture of it on the pad You might be able to tell if it was a missile defense test if they put it out there and pointed it at Korla like the day before.

Scott 40:49

Right. You could start actually figuring out, oh, that would be incredible.

Jeffrey 40:54

Yeah. And I just love that you can do this now. You know, and the only thing you need is, you know, a company that takes a picture of the Earth every day.

Scott 41:04

Just with one easy step of having global photographic coverage on the daily.

Jeffrey 41:09

Just, you know, we know a company like that. Yeah, shout out to our friends at Planet. Yeah, and so, you know, if the resolution, and the resolution's getting there, and we'll see what the final limit is. But, like, if the resolution can, if it's enough to tell me which way to tell is pointed, and I get a picture of Joe Tran every day on that pad.

And a picture of Korla every day. I mean, I just – the level of analysis I think that we're able to do is so amazing. What I love about this and what I sort of like rail to the students about is – You know, you can do this now because it is the same site that it was in the 50s, you know, you just have this, there's this like, yeah, I know they built that pad in the 50s and they've, you know, renovated it a couple of times, but to a first approximation, like it is the same place and you can do the same kind of analysis. So I, I don't know, I just, I think this is, I think this is so cool.

Scott 42:05

Yeah, this is a fantastic find. And it's such a good site to do analysis on in general, because like you said, there is a wealth of declassified imagery analysis and declassified missile analysis that details pretty heavily not only Zhishan, but like Wuji and the other test ranges, which also look the same, just upgraded and bigger. Yeah.

Jeffrey 42:32

Yeah. Gosh, I presume you've seen the silo at Wuji.

Scott 42:37

I have.

Jeffrey 42:38

I love the silo at Wuji. Both silos at Wuji. There's this wonderful moment, and I really should wrap this up, but there's this wonderful moment where I point out to the students, they read this article by John Lewis and Hua Di, and they mention that there's an experimental silo built at Wuji. And then I go and I show them the damn silo, right?

Yeah. It's not like a hypothetical thing. This is a real place, and you can go, you could be reading this and be like, oh, I want to see that, and then you can go get, A bunch of pictures, including a picture of it being open. Yep.

Scott 43:12

Which is, especially for the DF-5 silo, that's so helpful, because those DF-5 silos are supposed to be camouflaged. So having an example of it really undermines your camouflage.

Jeffrey 43:26

Well, I feel like we have so – thanks to these videos and the geolocation, we have so much more information about China's hit-to-kill program than we did a year ago. Oh, yes. Yeah. I think this has been really fun.

Scott 43:44

Yeah. And I'm hoping we get some more information about it. Hey, maybe next January we'll get another cold test.

Jeffrey 43:51

That's awesome. All right. Hey, this has been a tremendous amount of fun. Thanks for joining me, Scott. And thanks for listening. If you like the podcast, leave us a review on iTunes. And if you really like the podcast, consider making a donation through our Patreon page. We're almost ready with some subscriber benefits. Scott, do you want to show a little leg here?

Scott 44:09

Yeah, we're doing a lot of fun stuff with our subscriber benefits. For one, we're going to have a private Slack channel, like an Arms Control Wonk social club for the enlightened Arms Control Wonk to come in, kind of talk about stuff, talk about the episodes, but of course, use it also as a distribution channel for lots of neat imagery and videos related to the episodes and whatnot.

And as well, we may be doing some neat... Niche art products involving everybody's favorite missile and nuclear systems for some of the more premium backers.

Jeffrey 44:47

Yeah, I think it's cool. So we'll have the social and engagement opportunities, we'll have the swag with the logo, and then we'll have these Really, really cool art projects I should say. People should feel free to make suggestions. we're always interested in hearing what kind, what kind of bribes you'd like to support the pod. And thanks again for listening. Thank you everybody, you.