Transcript
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Jeffrey Lewis
0:07
You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, a 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.
Anne Pellegrino
0:24
And I'm Anne Pellegrino, a research associate and project manager at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Scott LaFoy
0:31
And I am Scott LaFoy, super producer of the Arms Control Wonk podcast, who has been notoriously absent for quite a while, y'all. Hello.
Jeffrey
0:39
You are back, Scott!
Scott
0:42
And back for the Chinese National Day Parade.
Jeffrey
0:45
Parade a missile, get a pod. We are so pleased that you're with us. Missiles.
Anne
0:52
And drones and thingies. Hypersonics. Whole shebang.
Anne
1:02
Yeah, those things were so cute. I'm sure they don't want us to think of them as cute, but, you know, cute. Cute.
Jeffrey
1:10
There's actually a whole discussion about whether Carol Cohn's observations about men patting the bomb, which she thinks is partly sexual in nature, but she thinks also is partly about domestication. Whether that explains the tendency in Japan to try to make things cute, whether that makes it more socially acceptable.
Scott
1:38
Oh, China has a ton of artwork of chibified PLA hardware as well. That would not surprise me in the least. There's like a very intense combination of cartoonish adorableness and very hardcore military hardware.
Anne
1:54
So Marty Pfeiffer, his hashtag is sex and death for these types of things. I like Jamie Withorn's new hashtag, which is hashtag missile dick.
Jeffrey
2:07
Yeah, Marty has announced that he is switching over to missile dick.
Anne
2:12
Just call it what it is.
Anne
2:15
It does not, it is not subtle. Loud and proud. So should we talk about...
Jeffrey
2:20
Just the parade in general, before we, we jump into the hardcore wonk porn of, of each of these systems and what they say, because I, you know, as somebody who spent a lot of time in China in the past, I, I, I like me a parade.
Scott
2:33
I think from some of the discourse that we were watching on Twitter during it, I think it'd be helpful to do like a little kind of refresher on what the parade is and is not like, it's not an exclusively military event, like the ones we've seen in Jiraha. And I think that'd be nice to, you know, touch on that.
Anne
2:50
I, this is not my main area of expertise. And so when I look at people nerding out on Twitter, I need some people to explain all of this to me. And so I think I had the two perfect people to do that. So, yeah, I'd love to hear about all these really wacky kind of theatrics that were going on.
And then y'all can give me the rundown on all of the systems, because it seems like there are a number of weird things and a bunch of stuff that is new that was, I guess, our first look at some of these systems. Or, well, not the systems themselves, but, you know, canisters and the like.
Jeffrey
3:34
Yeah. Well, I think the thing to say is that, you know, this is the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the people's Republic of China. So while this is a military parade, this is not a military anniversary and it's part of a much larger kind of series of events that are going on. And so, you know, we're, we're all looking at the military piece and that, you know, there's pretty much been a military parade.
Almost every 10 years, you know, I think there was one in 49, one in 59. The 60s, 70s get weird, right? Because I think there's one in 84. For obvious reasons, 89 is a subdued event, I believe. I don't recall there being one. But then again, you know, 99, 2009, and now in 2019.
Anne
4:24
Oh, so this is like a 10-year parade. It's not an every year thing?
Scott
4:29
They do actually have a parade every year, or an event at least, but not necessarily a military parade, and certainly not a nuclear weapons-bearing military parade.
Anne
4:40
Okay, so it makes a bit more sense of why we're seeing all of the Big Daddy... Systems on display.
Jeffrey
4:47
Yeah, this is really, I think the way to think of it as a once in a decade event. But, you know, China's politics being tumultuous, there have been times when they've missed them. Like, I'm pretty sure there wasn't one in 79. At least I've never seen pictures of it. And then the one that I remember, I think, is from 84.
So they did it, you know, on the, what would that have been? 84 would have been the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Republic. Because, you know, politically in China, it wasn't always a great idea to have a parade. Yeah.
Scott
5:28
Yeah, and there's just a lot of celebrations around it. So if anyone's looking for, you know, National Day parades, they're going to actually have to dig through a good deal of civil celebrations that are sort of unrelated to the military hardware view. Like CCTVs put out like, geez, like somehow 24 hour, in the last 24 hours, they put out 28 hours of celebratory materials.
Anne
5:49
And so being kind of the outsider looking in, there were a lot of inside jokes on Twitter that I didn't really understand. That doesn't sound like Twitter.
Jeffrey
5:59
That doesn't sound like China specialists either.
Anne
6:02
Okay, so there was someone made a video of Xi riding around in the open top limo set to Curb Your Enthusiasm music.
Scott
6:16
He did look bored. He looks bored. Xi Jinping is not known for his expressive personality. I mean, on a relative scale, compared to Hu Jintao, he's emotionally unstable, practically. But he's still very, very reserved by normal human standards.
Jeffrey
6:35
There are inanimate objects that are emotionally unstable compared to Hu Jintao.
Scott
6:41
Accurate. And so the joke is sort of that in previous parades, and it's not just this one, we've made fun of him a little bit before in this like in Jiraha a year or two back, where he just rides up and down looking at these things and he just looks so put upon. Like this is the most boring thing in the world for him and he just wishes people would stop yelling at him and that it's hot.
Anne
7:02
Is that like a power thing though to look... Bored and reserved? You know, like the parade?
Jeffrey
7:09
No, I don't think so. Maybe, but I mean, one thing that came up was this question of, is it unusual for a Chinese leader to actually be in a limousine standing through the sunroof? Josh Pollack was like, that's odd, right? But it turns out that is a Regular feature of all these parades.
Scott
7:35
It does lead to a very surreal, fun event where at the very beginning, the political leader and one of the major generals will drive their cars in front of each other and speak. And it just looks to me like they're driving go-karts or bumper cars when they do that. They just have two men standing outside of their sunroofs yelling at each other in the sun.
It's just very funny to me.
Jeffrey
7:57
Yeah, but Hu Jintao did it in 2009. Jiang Zemin did it in 1999. Deng Xiaoping did it in 84. And interestingly, Mao only did it, like, once, and it wasn't for one of these. He was, like, in a jeep. He only did one, and it was, like, before the founding of the republic. But, like, Judah, who is...
The source of many things in the pla including the basketball courts that we all appreciate as a signature and satellite images of chinese yeah well i'll tell that story in a second judah did the first one in 49 and he was standing up in a limo and then i think in 59 lin biao did it so it's like it's i think it's strange to westerners but i i think if you like removed that from the parade it would strike a chinese person as like really weird like where did the car go
Scott
8:48
Yeah, it is traditional.
Jeffrey
8:49
You want me to tell that Judah story? I can do it quick.
Scott
8:51
Please do tell the Judah story. I love Judah stories.
Jeffrey
8:54
So one of the things I love about what we do is our ability to integrate new and modern information with historical and traditional research. And obviously, when we look at satellite images, one of the best signatures of a PLA facility are the basketball courts. And I'd always wondered like, why basketball? In fact, I had a defense official here and we were talking about a facility we'd located.
And he was like, why basketball? Because it could be anything. And I was reading Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, right, which is published in the 30s. And in the biographical sketch of Judah, it mentions in passing that as a young man in Sichuan province, he played basketball at the YMCA and it became his favorite sport. And as a consequence, when they had to pick an exercise activity for the PLA, that's what he picked.
Right. So today, when we look at satellite images of Chinese bases, we have this signature, which is a function of some lunatic from the YMCA more than 100 years ago who taught like a teenage Judah to play basketball.
Anne
9:59
So the Chinese have basketball and the North Koreans have volleyball.
Scott
10:04
And what is it that Henry Kissinger apparently erroneously said? Oh, yeah. Cubans do baseball, but there's a soccer field here.
Jeffrey
10:11
Yeah, the Russians play soccer. Yeah, Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer. So anyway, so there is this kind of car thing. I also got a kick out of seeing China's past leaders junk. Chunks him in. He's looking old.
Scott
10:28
He looked a little mummified. Oh, very Weekend at Bernie's moment when he came out. I was very nervous for him. He had to be carried outside in that heat.
Jeffrey
10:37
Yeah, I wondered if somebody was going to literally lift his arm up and wave it like Weekend at Bernie's. And Hu Jintao was looking old, too. He stopped dyeing his hair.
Scott
10:48
He did. I hardly recognized him when I first saw him. He just doesn't give a f*** anymore.
Jeffrey
10:54
But Scott, you got your favorite part.
Scott
10:57
Oh, my goodness. I have been waiting for seven years for the DF-41 to actually be paraded. In those seven years, five of them, I have been promised a parade with the DF-41 every year.
Jeffrey
11:14
And here I thought you were excited about the flag raising. I know. Me too.
Scott
11:18
God dang. Well, there was a lot. This is a big event for me. You can't pick your favorite. Okay. Well, everyone's here for missiles partially. So that's ghost of Christmas future for that one. So when the PLA raises a flag, it is one of my favorite flag ceremonies I've ever seen. Like I spend a lot of time looking at the trappings of militaries, listening to military music and like sort of figuring out like military cultures on stuff.
And the Chinese, the PLA specifically, does instead of raising a flag and sort of what I would describe as the very somber lockstep way that the US military does, which is you just sort of, you know, you move the flag towards the pole and you lift it and you pull the rope and whatnot. in China, you actually kind of reverently hold the end of the flag and then sort of ball it up and And then in this very dramatic gesture, throw your hand above your head and out to the...
I can't think if it's left or right right now because I always watch these on TV, so I get the directions backwards. And throw the flag as far as you can while someone pulls the flag as hard as they can, as fast as they can up the pole. And it's this very dramatic gesture of... That we slightly less reverently referred to as dabbing the flag. Prior to recording this, and the North Koreans have adopted this and at least the first time I can remember seeing this was, I believe, 2018. The North Koreans did this for the first time that I can think of, though I haven't actually gone back and checked all of them, but it's very dramatic. I'll, I'll find a clip and put it in the show notes.
Anne
12:56
It's funny. I'm really glad you showed it to me.
Jeffrey
12:58
I find you slightly exaggerating. I mean, they do flip it out.
Anne
13:04
Do you see how sharp that movement is? It's very intense.
Scott
13:08
Yeah. And maybe it's dependent on the soldier because, you know, this year's was fairly subdued, to be fair. This year's was not that exciting. But I dropped into the Skype one from last year's National Day Parade. The guy's way more into it.
Jeffrey
13:20
We we, we got quite a parade. I have to say one last thing is once the actual, there, there were, you know, two reveals, you know, there was Xi Jinping driving along the equipment and, and they actually were really careful about what they showed us and what they didn't show us. Right. It was like a teaser.
Jeffrey
13:44
Which, which was kind of great. And I, and I particularly loved the way that they had the The soldiers assigned to each, largely soldiers, I guess, assigned to each unit would, like, turn their head as he passed with, like, that crazy look in their eyes.
Anne
14:01
It's like Scar and the hyenas in The Lion King.
Jeffrey
14:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anne
14:07
It's exactly what it is.
Jeffrey
14:09
So we got, like, some hints and some teasers, and then they rolled down Chongan Avenue, and it was a good time ahead by all. I think the first thing that came down the road was a UUV, an uninhabited underwater vehicle. I actually tweeted out with UUV if you're into that kind of thing. It's really squat. Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't know that I care so deeply about it, but it was it was it's a really interesting questions.
I don't. I don't fully know that I know what that UUV is for.
Anne
14:54
So we do not know its mission.
Jeffrey
14:56
Well, I just don't want the UUV lovers to feel left out.
Anne
15:01
There's something for everyone.
Jeffrey
15:03
There's something for everyone. So I would just, maybe we should cut out the UAV, the UUV conversation entirely. Oh, somebody tweeted at me that they had written something on it. And then, of course, I was never able to actually find it because we've been laughing so hard.
Scott
15:18
So we have this mysterious little squat robot sub.
Jeffrey
15:22
And then the drones, which you also hate, Scott.
Scott
15:25
Well, I'm not a drone person. Again, there's exactly one set of things I'm excited about. And I will be patient because I've already jumped the gun once.
Anne
15:34
So there were two drones, right?
Jeffrey
15:36
Well... Two drones of merit. Yeah, that's right. Lots of...
Scott
15:40
So... We're skipping a lot of stuff. There also were a bunch of soldiers here involved. We're skipping all... For listeners, we're skipping a bunch of the stuff that's sort of the more mundane or ground forces aspects.
Anne
15:50
All right. So drone number one.
Jeffrey
15:52
So drone number one.
Jeffrey
15:54
Yeah, which we now have a designation for. It's GJ-11, which we didn't have previously.
Scott
16:02
And this is the one that looks a whole lot like Northrop Grumman's new unmanned aerial platform that I think is, there's a surveillance one, and I think is there not a refueling one as well that looks similar, though not exact?
Jeffrey
16:16
Yeah, so I think we don't really have a full sense of what this thing is, right? The Global Times says that it's a stealth attack drone, so they've described it as a UCAV. I expect we will see lots more drones like this in the future and probably just not for combat roles and you know it's the global time so sometimes they exaggerate but so we got that drone and then there was another drone the WZ-8 yes
Scott
16:54
Well, I think it doesn't. That is one of the designations that we have seen. Exactly.
Jeffrey
17:00
It doesn't have, I believe, precisely a designation, but that's certainly what our friends at Global Times call it. Okay.
Anne
17:09
So enlighten me.
Jeffrey
17:12
Well, so it's a rocket-powered drone. Yeah. Doesn't have any air intake, and, you know, a close examination, it looks like it's a rocket. So it looks like the old D-21.
Scott
17:28
Yeah, that weird thing that was supposed to sit on top of the Blackbird and be blasted off during surveillance missions, if I remember correctly.
Jeffrey
17:39
Yeah, although the D-21 had a ramjet. Yes, it did. I don't want to overdo it, but the D-21 was famous because it was a... Supersonic reconnaissance drone from the late sixties, early seventies, I think it was 69 and 71. It ran that the U S flew over China because the Chinese, you know, we're like getting pretty good at shooting down Taiwanese U2s.
Anne
18:03
This, sorry, the, the, the D 21, I was looking at a picture. Is that the thing that's at the Udvar-Hazy center? Yes. In Dulles.
Jeffrey
18:13
Ah, yeah. Yep. And Ben Rich has a, has a funny account of it in his, in his memoir, but Just because it was a China-focused system, I think a lot of us are surprised to see something that looks similar. It's probably not the same, although it does seem like it is for reconnaissance.
Scott
18:34
And it appears to be, it has a lot of indications that it would be launched from an aerial platform. Like it would be carried by a bomber or a heavy lift vehicle, deployed midair, and then land. It does have landing gear and indicates that it's recoverable.
Jeffrey
18:49
It has those two mounting points on the top of the airframe. Yeah, okay, I see that in the picture. And then the engine would light and off it would go.
Scott
19:02
It also, if you check out the, if you look at some of the high resolution photos of the area around the two nozzles on the rocket engines on the back, it looks like it has, and this is again kind of speculative, it looks like it should have a cover over it that would increase its aerodynamics mid-flight that would pop off once it starts.
In a similar way to if you look at like ALBMs and other things that are covered that have certain kinds of engines that they don't want to light for a long time. They put a rear cap on it, like the Kinjal appears to have a rear cap that comes off at some point, which I assume is for aerodynamics again.
Oh, interesting. This also is shaped like an HGV model we saw floating around in 2017 that people used to call the DF-17.
Anne
19:45
Yeah, it does.
Jeffrey
19:47
But now we've seen the DF-17.
Anne
19:50
Yeah. Which actually also looks pretty similar to be honest.
Scott
19:53
Yeah, well, we start getting into super and hypersonics. I feel like everything sort of takes on the same smooth rocket shape.
Jeffrey
19:58
Form follows function.
Jeffrey
20:02
So, I mean, the most interesting thing about this, now that we are almost done with the drones and the UUVs and gotten where we love, is I have seen people speculate that reconnaissance aircraft like this might be really useful in providing information for anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Scott
20:20
Oh, interesting.
Jeffrey
20:21
That's the speculation I've heard. I don't have any way of assessing whether that's a plausible or reasonable thing. You know, maybe it's just a reconnaissance aircraft and possibly it's just that, you know, people are really into ASBMs and so everything is an ASBM system, but...
Anne
20:40
So explain to me that connection.
Scott
20:44
So ASBMs have really high ISR requirements. To actually hit a ship at sea, you have to be able to see where that ship is with some sort of radar system. Since those ships, those missiles are really long range, those ships are frequently very far away from shore, past the range of radars. China only has a limited number and range of over-the-horizon radars.
Jeffrey
21:08
And of course, in a war, they would have fewer.
Scott
21:10
Fewer, yeah, exactly. They're very known positions publicly. And so having an ISR platform that would be capable of identifying and relaying the location and projected path of a ship for the next half hour or so would be a fairly vital part of having ASBMs. Because otherwise they don't work. Otherwise it's just a terminally guided missile. And if you don't know where to look for it, like...
Jeffrey
21:42
You're going to kill a lot of fish for no particular purpose.
Scott
21:45
Yeah, exactly. And it's not, it's a, they're terminally guided. Like we assume that those missiles can see a certain size on the way down, but they still have to know sort of what multi-mile block to be looking at and to be fired into.
Jeffrey
22:02
But, I mean, that's, we should say, all speculation.
Scott
22:06
Very speculative.
Jeffrey
22:07
It's clearly built for high speed. We don't see any air intake, so we're assuming that it's a rocket engine. We see a landing gear, so we're assuming that it doesn't go boom. And it has two hard points on the top, so we're assuming it gets dropped from an airplane. But beyond that, we're just sitting on the porch telling stories.
Anne
22:32
Okay, Scott, it's time for some missiles.
Jeffrey
22:34
Well, we should start with the missile we didn't get. We wanted a DF-16.
Scott
22:39
We... Who wanted a DF-16? Get out of here. We've seen enough DF-16s.
Jeffrey
22:43
Ah, I wanted a DF-16.
Scott
22:46
So sad. We have so many... We have high-resolution footage of their firing tables. It's true.
Jeffrey
22:50
So the DF-16 is a new short-range ballistic missile that looks like it's going to replace the... The DF-11 and the DF-15. We didn't get a DF-16, but we did get a DF-17, and that makes me extremely happy.
Scott
23:05
This is such a big deal of a system.
Jeffrey
23:07
This one is the one that I didn't know I wanted as badly as I did now that I have it.
Scott
23:12
This is a weird one. So the DF-17 is allegedly either operational or entering its initial operational capacity. One of the two. It's always a little hazy with China. And it is a hypersonic glide vehicle. It is very apparently a hypersonic glide vehicle from its shape. And it is the first one to be deployed operationally atop a ballistic missile, as far as we are aware.
Anne
23:36
It looks wild. I've never seen anything that looks like it.
Anne
23:42
Modeling it is going to be a challenge.
Jeffrey
23:45
Yes. Yes. We have this really nice software that we have used to model ballistic missiles, and this is going to require us to spend a lot of time with the aerodynamics editor.
Scott
24:03
For one, also, in a lot of modeling stuff, because missiles are mostly, have, like, set radial symmetries, you can also sometimes, like, model little bits of it and expand it. This is not a symmetrical, it's not symmetrical radially. It's only symmetrical across one direction. Because it looks like a very fast cruise missile or drone. Because that's basically what we want.
Jeffrey
24:23
And I should say, I mean, the reason that we knew about this is Ankit Panda in December 2017 reported on some intelligence assessments. So this thing started testing in November of 2017. And You know, I think the test went 1,400 kilometers and never got above 60 kilometers, right?
Scott
24:45
Which is crazy low.
Jeffrey
24:47
Really long range without getting very high, which is a delight if you're the defender with a missile defense. Yeah. And so one of the things that I think is interesting is my understanding is that the assessed range of the system was 1,800 to 2,500 kilometers and that they thought it was based on a DF-16. Yes, and we're now trying to figure out if that's true.
Scott
25:17
Yeah, this one took me aback a little bit when it came out because it's got a bunch of stuff that does look like a DF-16, but it's got a bunch of little things that are inconsistent with the DF-16 unless they've changed their support hardware, which to be fair, they could have.
Jeffrey
25:31
Yeah, but you were really looking at the firing table, right, Scott, to try to figure out what kind of... That's what I was going to ask.
Anne
25:39
Two columns, similarities, differences.
Scott
25:41
Yes. So first off, I want to go with clear similarities. First off, it does just visually look like a DF-16. I have not measured it. The tell is common to the DF-16 mostly. It is the same five-axle Heavy tell. It has a lighter version of the DF-16's coffin. The DF-16 doesn't have a canister, but it's also not totally naked.
It has an environmental control coffin that it, like, raises up like Leslie Nielsen in that movie when it needs to fire, and then it goes back down. Like, it has a very covered arm. And the DF-17 has part of that, and it may just not have had the whole thing for parade, but the... Firing table, which is the thing that sits under the missile that's between the missile and the ground, it helps divert flame when the missile is igniting and provides a stable, aimable surface, is very small.
And I mean very small. So... Typically, firing tables increase, they scale with the size of the missile because the more heat it's putting out, the more complex, or the more, I guess not complex, it's not actually that complex, it's the more robust flame-like trenching. I forget the name of those right now, but you need ramps to scoot more fire away.
It's fairly straightforward. This one is very small. The DF-16s we've seen before and it's big. It is a very large firing table because it's a very large. The DF-16, as far as we know, is the largest solid propellant missile. They hot fire. Everything else is too big and they fire it out of a canister first and ignite it midair to avoid burning it up.
The df16 is very large firing table and the df17s firing table would be consistent with later revisions of the df15s firing table and a little bit like a df11s firing table it's got commonalities to both but it doesn't match either perfectly the df15 used to have a big old firing table and over time it shrank and got to the point where it didn't even really touch the ground mostly just sort of hung out the back of the Normally they stabilize on ground.
So it's a little funky.
Jeffrey
27:53
So, I mean, in the end, we're going to be able to tell. We're just going to have to sit down and measure it, right? Yeah.
Scott
27:59
Yes, that's the most important thing.
Jeffrey
28:00
The DF-16, a.k.a. The CS-11, according to the U.S. intelligence community, is substantially wider than the DF-11 or the DF-15. So we... We just have to sit down and measure it, which is not a thing we have had time to do. But a thing that I don't anticipate will prove all that difficult, given how great Adam Martin has become at measuring stuff.
Scott
28:27
Excellent. And that basically wipes everything away. Like, if it's a DF-16, it's a DF-16, and they've adapted their materials.
Jeffrey
28:34
I actually gave Adam the Fata 110 and the Zolfgar, knowing that one is 610 millimeters and the other is 680 millimeters, to see if he could spot the difference. And he did. He figured out one was 70 centimeters bigger than the other. And his guesses were 610 and 680. So assuming that Adam can maintain that level of excellence, we will have a proper answer to this question in a few days.
It's just people got to stop launching crap.
Jeffrey
29:07
Yeah, well, let me. Yeah. So, well, then then we get the supersonic cruise missile.
Scott
29:15
Yeah, the DF-100 is what it's labeled as, and I believe the announcers identified it as either the CJ-100 or the CJ-1000. I don't remember.
Jeffrey
29:23
Yeah, that's a little bit of a surprise because, you know, in September... There was a video with a tiny little clip showing this bizarre cruise missile with strakes being launched. This tiny, itty-bitty little, like, it's maybe a, maybe it's not even a full, it's two seconds. And people caught it. We didn't catch it. Somebody else caught it.
And then the Chinese went and they went back and they took it down and re-edited it.
Scott
29:55
Oh, yeah, I was not interested until they took it down.
Scott
29:59
They Streisand affected that missile very hard.
Jeffrey
30:02
They totally did. They clearly blew their big reveal of what looks like a supersonic cruise missile. I have no idea what the hell this thing is.
Scott
30:19
Yeah, and it's for listeners who follow Chinese cruise missiles. It basically appears to be a much, much larger vertically launching version. It looks very similar to the DF-10 that has been previously called about 200 different names. But the DF-10...
Jeffrey
30:39
The DF-10, DH-10, CJ, whatever, yeah. Just come up with a consistent naming convention with your cruise missile. You know who did not have this problem? Yeah, Rung Jun. He knew how to name a missile and stick with it.
Scott
30:53
Well, the cruise, yeah. So the DF-100 probably fires vertically, almost like a SAM.
Jeffrey
31:00
Yeah, well, that's what the two-second video suggested.
Scott
31:04
Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. And it only has two tubes, but they're very large tubes. Yeah, it's a big missile. It's a big one.
Jeffrey
31:10
And I think the thing we should say is that both of these are conventionally armed. I think, according to OnKit, the U.S. intelligence community had assessed that the DF-17 would be nuclear armed.
Jeffrey
31:21
But one, it's a pretty tiny little payload package. But, you know, maybe. But the Chinese announced that it was a conventional...
Scott
31:33
And we should also add they've not been shy about mentioning that missiles are nuclear during parades. In the 26th debut, they called it a three-mission missile and said one of those missions was nuclear.
Jeffrey
31:43
Yeah, no, they're not embarrassed about their nuclear forces, as we discover from all the stuff that's about to come along. So, I mean, the fact that they tell us it's conventional, I suspect, means that it truly is, at least for the moment.
Scott
31:57
I think at least for the moment is probably safe. And that would be also a very complex system to equip with a nuclear weapon, at least on your first go.
Jeffrey
32:05
Yeah. So now, now, now, now we're getting into the nukey stuff, which makes me happy. If it doesn't fission, I don't care.
Scott
32:15
We had the 26 and the 31 AG, which were unchanged.
Anne
32:20
But still very nice.
Jeffrey
32:22
So, you know, for listeners, so we've done a DF-17 is basically a medium range. I don't really want to call it a ballistic missile, but it's a ballistic missile with a hypersonic glider. And a medium range cruise missile. And now we've got the DF-26, which is an intermediate range ballistic missile. We also had the JL-2.
Scott
32:43
Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm sorry. I skipped over a fairly big reveal.
Anne
32:49
Is this the first time we've seen this? Yes. Yeah. So it's the first time it's been paraded.
Jeffrey
32:54
Yeah. Oh. We've seen it popping up out of the water.
Scott
32:57
Okay. Gotcha. And the JL-2 is thought to be derived from the DF-31. Right. Interestingly, as far as I know, Jeffrey, it went DF-31 to the JL-2, not the other direction, which is exactly the opposite of the JL-1, which started in a submarine and went on to land.
Jeffrey
33:16
Yeah, I mean, it's one of these funny things where China's early solid rocketry efforts were driven by a desire to have a submarine capability, which in like the 60s and 70s was goofy because I was asking really a lot of them. And so, you know, they eventually did in the 80s build the Xia-class missile submarine, which was a terrible boat.
And the JL-1 which was Basically a sea-based sister to the DF-21. And it's like slightly unclear, but it sounds like, you know, the problems with the submarine and the missile were so sufficient that in one telling by John Wilson Lewis, no relation, that, you know, they said that JL is Julong Great Wave. Right. And so they said, like, the great wave must go ashore.
And so it starts as this crappy submarine launch ballistic missile becomes this workhorse land based ballistic missile for them. Right. They have a ton of DF-21s today of all shapes and sizes. I think we're on like the mod six now of the DF-21, which is.
Scott
34:35
Yeah, the mystery mod.
Jeffrey
34:36
Yeah, the mystery mod. We don't know what it does, but, you know, they're nuclear conventional, several nuclear, several conventional and anti-ship version. And then the mystery mod. But when they went back and did it a second time, they prioritized the land-based DF-31. And the JL-2 seems to be derived from it, share certain technology. But I actually don't know if it's a copy in the way that the 21 and the JL-1 were, or if it's more like the relationship between the Peacekeeper and the D-5, which is to say...
A lot of commonality, but still a purpose-built missile.
Scott
35:16
Right. And that's always been a little unclear, like you said.
Jeffrey
35:20
We just need some people to write a history, some people to die, or a new missile to come so that this missile becomes old and they feel like telling us about it.
Scott
35:29
Well, and we do allegedly have a JL-3 somewhere. Somewhere out there, yeah. Just not at this parade, unfortunately. And the JL-2 is interesting just for folks who are looking at the pictures and go like, you know, that doesn't look like a missile. It's very blocky. The JL-2 has one of those shrouds that has small solid motors in it that blasts it off at one point.
Jeffrey
35:51
Yeah, which are awesome when you see that. I mean, I was shocked the first time I learned that countries did that.
Scott
35:57
So what is it? So for some, so you know how on U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missiles, we have that fancy arrow spike. And so when the missile is actually going through the water, it has a different hydrodynamic and aerodynamic profile because it has this little spike that pops up after it has ejected from the water. So it's sort of as two different shapes without actually being two different shapes.
The JL-2 and certain other missiles, to make them more friendly, to make the seas more friendly on the way up, they will have these very blunt, very blocky shrouds that looks like a stage is missing. It looks like missiles get smaller towards the top.
Jeffrey
36:41
They look like a canister rather than a missile. Yes. A pain that our GRAs have experienced on occasion.
Anne
36:49
Yes. Don't bring it up. It's a sore subject for all of us.
Scott
36:56
It's also sort of like there's just a canister over the third stage. Right. Once it breaks the surface and you know it's sort of sitting there for a second before it ignites. The solid rocket very small solid rocket motors ignite and rip the shroud off different countries do it different ways but they frequently rip it off vertically and sometimes you'll have a lateral thruster throw it to the side so it doesn't hit the missile and then it flies up there's a great video of the i think the indian k4 has a really okay i want to go look at that yeah and but the russians do it too or for some of them not all of them
Jeffrey
37:32
But you can tell that this is a missile and not a canister because you can see the cable raceways on the two stages on the outside of the missile.
Scott
37:42
Accurate. I thought when we saw the satellite images and some of the early drone footage of the JL-2 in Parade, I actually thought it was the canister. And then when we zoomed in, you see those raceways. I had the same reaction.
Jeffrey
37:54
For listeners who are not totally in, like... Deep on the missile things. You can't run cabling through your missile propellant.
Jeffrey
38:04
Burning rocket propellant tends to do bad thing to cables. So you got to run them on the outside of the missile. So you can tell where the propellant is inside the missile based on an external structure called a cable raceway that routes the cable from the top of the stage to the bottom of the stage. So you know that there's impassable propellant in between.
Anne
38:25
It's really helpful, actually. That was something that I did not know originally. Many years ago when I was a novice, I did not know.
Scott
38:33
That cable raceway is a very important factor as well for any listeners who are interested in tracking the North Korean Iskander lookalike.
Anne
38:42
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott
38:44
Then we done got ourselves a DF-31AG. We do. Debuted, if I remember correctly, either, God, time doesn't mean anything anymore, two years ago at Jirihara?
Jeffrey
38:53
Yeah, it was at that. But do you want to explain that parade for listeners? Because in addition to these National Day parades, Xi Jinping did a parade at an, I guess that's an airfield, isn't it?
Scott
39:06
I believe it is an airfield. It's a major airfield. Yeah. But it's in the middle of Ney Mongol. It is out there. Yeah.
Jeffrey
39:12
But that, you know, you can actually see that parade. There were a bunch of new systems and you can actually see U.S. estimates of systems jump up because of that parade in unclassified literature.
Scott
39:24
Oh, that's interesting. That was a couple of years ago.
Jeffrey
39:27
That was a big reveal. Yeah. You know, they're now at 90 ICBMs in China military power as opposed to 75 to 100 back in the Back in the previous periods. I think the lower number disappeared in part because you got to account for all the DF-31 AG launchers that we saw for the first time.
Scott
39:47
Oh, we may have had this discussion. It's been a while.
Jeffrey
39:49
Yeah. But the question is, so the DF-31 is an ICBM. The DF-31A is, you know, like the Chinese tend to do a DF-31, then they'll do a, in the US we call it a Mod 2. They stick an A on it. That's usually an extended range version. We are still a little curious about what the G means.
Scott
40:09
I believe it means modification. I forget the exact word. Yeah, but it doesn't tell us what the modification is.
Jeffrey
40:16
Yeah, actually, I've got somewhere on this computer, I have the word that I think it means, but it doesn't tell us what is modified. So we don't know if it's the missile or if it's actually just the transporter.
Scott
40:28
Yeah, and my speculation on that is that it's just the tell being different. But that's my personal analytic opinion on that, is the move from the tells changed it. Because we never saw a similar naming convention happen with the DF-21s.
Jeffrey
40:41
Yeah, that's right. Even when they... So, if I recall... Ah, here it is. I have it. The first G we saw was... There was a... There was a designation at a museum.
Scott
41:02
Yes, that was very, very like the week before the parade, if I remember correctly.
Jeffrey
41:10
Right. So and one was called the DF-31A nuclear weapons system. And the other was called the DF-31A Comprehensive Improvement. And the first character of the word improvement was... Oh, Jesus, it's a third tone. I can't do this. Guy. Right? Right? Yeah, I don't know. My Chinese sucks. So the G is G G is an improvement. So, you know, is it the missile?
Is it the, probably not. Right. Cause it would be, if it were the missile would be a DF 31 B or C or D. So probably the fact that it's a new integrated transporter. But then we got the DF-5, the DF-5B, which is the MIRV version of the DF-5. I love the DF-5. You know, it is the culmination of the four missiles in eight years plan, which actually takes the Chinese like 23 years or something, depending on how you count it.
It takes them like 20 years.
Anne
42:24
I remember this from your class.
Jeffrey
42:27
You know, the thing about this is this is a MIRVed version of the DF-5. And so it probably has, I would guess, four DF-31 type reentry vehicles on it. Rather than the old, you know, big multi-megaton warhead that traditionally armed the DF-5. But we've seen it before.
Scott
42:45
We have. Not new. Beloved, but not new.
Jeffrey
42:48
Now, Scott, do you want to freak out because we're at your boy?
Scott
42:52
I've waited seven years for this missile, and you made me wait 45 more minutes to talk about this missile. I'm going to lose my damn mind. This is the DF-41. I love this missile. This is one of the first, when I first got into the industry, this was one of the first big white whales for us.
Jeffrey
43:13
Yeah, because, you know, the DF-41 was, like, in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s, we knew there was going to be a DF-31 and a DF-41. And then we got, they didn't get around testing the DF-31 until, like, the late 90s. And they didn't get around testing the DF-31A until, like, the mid-2000s. And so we thought the DF-41 had been canceled.
Yep. Because this missile was supposed to literally be done 20 years ago. They were playing this missile seriously in the mid-1980s. So it's been a long time.
Anne
43:48
So is this, was anybody expecting at all to see this or was this like a holy shit moment?
Jeffrey
43:53
Yeah, you know, I will say the folks at FRS, the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, have opened up a new kind of open source capability. Do you know this? And they published their first open source article On the parade preparations using a satellite image to predict what we would see. So Antoine Bondaz, who is a PhD at FRS and works with my friend Bruno Tertre, that's their first really big open source publication using satellite imagery.
Well, that's awesome. I am super excited that our little universe has gotten a little bit bigger and Antoine really seems to be the real deal. He had a co-author whose name escapes me and is not on Twitter, and I apologize to that person immediately.
Jeffrey
44:52
Yes. But he's not on Twitter.
Anne
44:55
I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at the paper right now.
Jeffrey
44:59
So, Scott, so basically the DF-41 is a large, solid propellant ICBM.
Jeffrey
45:06
You know, similar to the Peacekeeper or the Yars in Russia. So was it all you hoped it was, Scott?
Scott
45:15
I mean, after the DF-17, honestly, the DF-41, I was very excited to see it, but I did know what it looked like already. We had a pretty good idea. The DF-41 has gone from really tight OPSEC to no OPSEC in the last two years.
Jeffrey
45:30
Which I think means it's deployed.
Scott
45:32
Yeah, like we've seen a lot of driving videos with it, which has been surprising. So we knew what it was going to look like. It's just nice to see it. I'm glad it's finally out in the open. And I have no idea what L&M is. Who makes their, like that's a... The truck? Yeah, the truck has a new logo on it.
And that's not who makes, like I don't, we know the manufacturer and it's not L&M. So I don't know who LM is, but I'm really interested to find out what that means. Several of the trucks had new logos on them. They all still look like they're frowning.
Jeffrey
46:07
I will say one thing that is slightly a challenge is we have a canister, but we do not have the missile itself.
Scott
46:15
Oh, that's a really good point.
Jeffrey
46:17
We are still going to be struggling to model this bad boy. Yeah. In part because we don't, you know, it's not like the Russians helpfully show us like silo launches of these things.
Jeffrey
46:33
And so you get like nice and they slow them down so you can kind of inspect, you know, they do like high speed photography and then they present it slowed down so you can get these, you know, beautiful composite images of every square centimeter of the damn missile. We do not have that for this missile. And so trying to figure, I mean, clearly it's big.
The U.S. intelligence community says it's going to have multiple warheads. What are multiple warheads? You know, is it, are we talking... I don't think we're talking 10.
Scott
47:03
No, that'd be unreasonably large.
Jeffrey
47:08
Well, and unreasonably small warheads on an unreasonably large missile. But, you know, we're probably talking, I would think, three or four. And so that's going to be kind of one of the interesting challenges is trying to figure out whether... Now that we've really seen a nice canister that we can kind of start to model, are we looking at three or four DF-31 type RVs?
Or has China gone ahead and deployed a new warhead that's yet smaller without testing? Because that would be a really interesting finding.
Scott
47:39
And I think Tom Moore had a really interesting point about this on Twitter is that the number may change because we know intelligence community estimates that have been publicly released indicate that the DF-41 has up to three basing modes. The TEL is the big flashy one that we've seen. But Catherine Dill tracked down the DF-21, the new DF-21 test silo in Wujai, and I believe Hans Christensen tracked down another new DF-41 silo.
Jeffrey
48:10
Yeah, it's a big training base, and I think that probably is a silo at the training base, but yeah, the design is very different from other Chinese silos, and so...
Scott
48:19
Yes, and there is a third basing mode that's a little more... I would go with experimental. Has this one been canceled? We may have heard that this one was either canceled or, like, on the chopping block, but the rail-based variant, where it, much like the stiletto in the Soviet Union, would be kept in a rail car and fired from a railway.
Yep.
Jeffrey
48:44
All of which is rampant speculation based on a vehicle that we'd seen before and our first really good look at a canister.
Scott
48:52
Yes. Just trying to bring us back. And, I mean, some of those come from government sources, though. Those are government reports.
Jeffrey
49:01
I know. Which, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, there's the parade and then there's this universe of knowledge around the parade. And so it informs what we see in the parade. But, you know, the parade itself is limited. Yeah. Hey, the last thing, and then I got to run. North Korea is ruining my life. We saw an H-6 bomber, but it did not have the air launch ballistic missile we all wanted.
Scott
49:24
No, indeed. I was also hoping they may show off the ALBM slung on the bottom of one of their gyrocopters, but alas, they did not provide that either.
Jeffrey
49:35
Oh my gosh. So while there were many reveals in this parade, there are yet more reveals to come since we know the U.S. intelligence community believes that China is testing an air-launched ballistic missile, which would give them a really interesting and I would say slightly bizarre nuclear triad if they go ahead with that.
Anne
49:58
So looking forward to 2029?
Jeffrey
50:00
Yeah, we live that long. What's that going to be?
Anne
50:06
Is that going to be 2029?
Jeffrey
50:08
Is that going to be Ivanka's third term?
Anne
50:12
That's not a happy note.
Jeffrey
50:17
Oh, well, I am so glad we got together to talk about the parade. I got to jump off and run to another interview. But, Anne, do you want to, Anne or Scott, do you want to tell us about the joys of supporting us through our Patreon?
Scott
50:33
Yes, I have not done this in a while. If you would like to support the Arms Control Wonk podcast for $3 a month if you are a student or $5 a month if you are a regular non-student human being, you can get access to our Slack channel where listeners like yourself exchange comments on the pod. We have a lot of people who pull declassified PDFs and pass them around and talk about weapon system development histories.
A lot of really cool folks. We also... Infrequently produce a small podcast called Brilliant Pebbles that I've been a little remiss about keeping active for people at that same tier, but I promise it's coming. We're complicit too. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a common action problem, and we're trying out a little bit of experimentation recently where, with this we did this for the, I think, 2018 North Korean parade.
And with this Chinese 70th National Day Parade, doing sort of live stream discussions of them where we get into a voice chat server of varying kinds and we may move to a YouTube live stream. We're seeing about it and do sort of like talking about what we're seeing, sort of doing this pod live.
Anne
51:50
I think that's an excellent idea.
Scott
51:52
It's super fun. I heard Sacred Defense Week was super good. Fabian was a little...
Anne
52:00
He poo-pooed it a little bit. I asked him what was great about it, and he was like, meh.
Scott
52:05
That's everyone's response. It was like the Coram Shorar had a smaller RV and that sort of thing. Yeah. Cool. So that's about it. Thank you for listening, and this is the first time I've potted with you.
Anne
52:19
I know. And thanks for enlightening me. I learned a lot today.
Scott
52:22
Thank you for driving. And we're going to pretend like Jeffrey hasn't left. Jeffrey, thank you. And thank everybody for listening.
