JL-3, You know me.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:07

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, among other things, a distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Aaron Stein 0:20

And I am Dr. Aaron Stein, president of SED Institute. Jeffrey, this is three in a row we've done in a week. This is a good schedule.

Jeffrey 0:29

We're killing it. Yeah. Life is good. Although this is the first pot I've done since leaving CNS.

Aaron 0:39

Yeah. I think you had a good 15-year run there. It's an institution we both care a lot about.

Jeffrey 0:45

It was a really great time, and I'm really grateful, but also a burden lifted.

Aaron 0:54

Yeah I mean, you and I, you know, you've been doing a lot of cool work over at FPRI. We've been doing a lot of work on space, and I think we made a good bet on space, although that's not what we're going to talk about today. No, we are going to talk about China's test of a submarine launched ballistic missile, which China fired.

Jeffrey 1:18

From someplace in China, I think it's still a little unclear, probably the Gulf of Bohai, out and the missile landed in the South Pacific nuclear weapons free zone. So we don't know exactly where, but you know, that's a haul.

Aaron 1:40

Are you sure they weren't aiming it at either Seattle or Vancouver to disrupt the World Cup?

Jeffrey 1:46

Yeah, we will get to my frustration with what message are they sending us. I used to go crazy when people would ask this about North Korea, and it's like, the message is the missile works. Well, okay.

Aaron 2:00

I have... Among other things, read the newspaper story about it. So that is the level of granularity I have in my understanding about what just happened. So why don't you fill us in on what your team was looking at, I assume, when they released the video.

Jeffrey 2:19

Yeah, there is not a lot of information. The Chinese said that they conducted the test, and they gave us two pictures. The pictures suck. I'm pretty sure it's a missile.

Aaron 2:33

So that's the signaling, is that we will not allow Jeffrey Lewis's team to do what they do.

Jeffrey 2:39

Yeah. I mean, I think as I, you know, partly it's because They're launching it from a submarine underwater. And so the camera is quite far away. And it's not going to be a big, beautiful camera on a tripod. It's going to be like a camera on a boat. Yeah. I assume that's accurate. Sure. And I think they aren't particularly eager to give away a bunch of information anyway.

They're always a little bit careful. But it looks like it's either a JL-2 or JL-3, which are the most modern submarine-launched ballistic missiles that China has. And those are super hard to tell apart. In fact, they are so hard to tell apart. I think it was Etienne Marcuse from France who noticed during the last parade That they had taken the canister or the parade dummy that had been marked JL-2, and they had painted over JL-2.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And they had painted JL-3 on it.

Aaron 3:46

Yes, yes, yes. You could see the sort of real quick black paint over what was a white number, and then just the two swapped out for a three. I do remember this quite vividly.

Jeffrey 3:58

So anyway, I think it's hard to know what it was, but given the distance, I'm leaning toward JL-3, but, you know.

Aaron 4:12

I mean, the Pacific is so large, but one of the announcements, at least, or quotes in the newspaper story I read was from the Kiwis, from New Zealand. And so it went a long way.

Jeffrey 4:23

Well, so again, you know, what they said was that it landed in the South Pacific nuclear weapons free zone, which is a huge area. And so I guess what we don't know is, did it land close enough to them that they really were entitled to get that bent out of shape? Or are they just, you know, being bent out of shape?

I don't know. You tell me. Or you have no idea. So the Kiwis. Maybe they're... If it really went... All the way, that makes a difference. I mean, so there are two questions, is where do we think it was fired from? If it's launched from- Are you getting squiggles? Near Yulin in Hainan, and it just barely gets into the South Pacific nuclear weapons free zone, that's like 5,000 kilometers.

If it's launched from Bohai, And it smacks down between, I don't know, New Zealand and Australia, then that's 9,500 kilometers. If it goes over New Zealand, well, New Zealand is 10, so it would probably hit New Zealand. I'm pretty sure they didn't hit New Zealand. That's just what I'm saying. We don't really know how far it went yet.

I'm sure that some reporting will come out. And the picture just, you know, the picture is poor. And I think visually, I wouldn't be able to tell those missiles apart. But it's either the JL-2 or the JL-3.

Aaron 5:59

And what do you guys know about that missile? Because I think the range would give you sort of a sense about where it could splash down if you could make assumptions about where it was launched.

Jeffrey 6:08

Well, 10,000 is the upper end of the JL-3. Yeah. The JL-2, basically the problem the Chinese had is the JL-2 had short legs. A submarine carrying it would have had to transit into the Western Pacific in order to be able to target the United States. And the Chinese, in particular, had moved their SSBN base to Hainan Island in the south, which is further away from the US, I think because they thought it would be safer or for the traditional bureaucratic reasons that, I mean, the Navy loves Hawaii.

And they can tell me that that's all about location all they want. But maybe it's just because it's nice. The JL-3 is probably around 10,000 kilometers range. But unclear what the payload is. Or is it shorter with more warheads? Don't know. But the idea there is then it wouldn't have to travel as far to target the US.

Aaron 7:16

Yeah. I mean, it all makes perfect sense. I mean, I guess a part of me is, is there actually a story here? Because we test Trident four times a year. I assume the test was announced. I assume that they put out a NOTAM. I assume that there was pre-notification, and so sometimes a test is just a test, or am I missing something?

Jeffrey 7:44

I think a test is just a test, although there is an asterisk that I'll put on that. I will say they did notify other countries. They said they notified other countries, and the story hit the press via those notifications before they conducted the test. I don't think they put out a notice. I think we could use ship tracking data, and I just haven't done it yet, to find where the Chinese— Suggested you don't drive the boat.

Well, no. They would have sent tracking ships out.

Aaron 8:23

Oh, yeah. Oh, I see what you're saying. I see. Sorry. I thought you were going to do something clever and backwards and be like, well, we'll just see what ships aren't and then we can figure out where the NOTAM should be.

Jeffrey 8:31

Oh, yeah. No, no.

Aaron 8:32

You're going to do something easier.

Jeffrey 8:34

I think that I think they probably we could probably look at where the ships went. And like, yeah. The U.S. and other nuclear powers do these tests all the time, and I. Think. I tried to say this in the New York Times. I got the call at like 11 o'clock at night. I was freaking exhausted. The story is not that this test is abnormal relative to other nuclear powers because it's not.

The US and other nuclear powers do this all the time. I think the story is that China is acting more like a normal nuclear power because China used to never do these kinds of tests.

Aaron 9:17

And do you think that was because they didn't have confidence that they'd work and they would be embarrassed or there's cultural issues in the PLA or both?

Jeffrey 9:29

I think it was about leadership politics. So in China, Almost all of the testing they have done has been within the country's borders, which limits the range that they can test to. And so, for example, when they were testing the DF-5, which was an ICBM that could target the United States in the 70s, late 60s and 70s, they would test it as a space launcher.

And then they would do tests that occurred solely in China. So they would have to either loft it or cut the engine. That meant they could never test the reentry vehicle and the system on a realistic trajectory. They ended up doing that once in 1980. It was the only open ocean test they did. It was a huge deal for them.

They had to make all the tracking ships. They basically had to create this infrastructure to do this test one time just to be sure the thing would work, and then they never did it again. I think now they have a new generation of strategic weapons. And if you look at Xi Jinping's internal 2012 speech, which I think is like the skeleton key to all of this, he made a big deal to the rocket force, which is not the Navy, but he was talking about nuclear weapons.

He made a big deal about how they had to do realistic exercises and testing. And so my sense is they are now going through all their strategic systems again, and they're going to do at least one open ocean test of every... Important system. I don't know if they're going to do two or three, which is what we do.

But I do think that Xi Jinping is willing to pay a higher cost in terms of international condemnation, which to be honest is not that much, right?

Aaron 11:24

I was about to say what – I'm not trying to sit here and rep for the – I'm not trying to sit here and rep for the Chinese. Why does – I guess landing in the South Pacific nuclear weapons free zone could be sort of something to just put out a press release, but I can't imagine anybody really cares.

I mean, we do that shit. I mean, I'm trying to be polite. I don't care. It's just like, okay, cool. Yeah, like, I mean...

Jeffrey 12:00

I mean, the other thing, which we don't talk about very much is, well, now I'm looking, maybe Kwajalein is outside the South Pacific nuclear weapons. I guess it is. The Marshall Islands signed the TPNW. And like all the stuff that the Marshall Islands does to support our nuclear weapons program should be absolutely prohibited by the TPNW. But everybody just kind of shrugs.

So like, yeah, I – so what?

Aaron 12:34

Yeah. I think the internal politics are more interesting though. I mean, does it have anything to do with these purges?

Jeffrey 12:41

Which have yet to have a really good explanation other than – No, I don't think so. I mean, I really think these are systems – Well, let me slightly rephrase that. I think that, you know, I don't like the frame that we always get in the media where people are like, what message are they trying to send to us?

Aaron 13:04

Well, that was my joke at the beginning of the pod. Were they trying to hurt the US men's national team tonight? Right.

Jeffrey 13:12

Yeah. Like, they're ruining Donald Trump's birthday or something. You know, I don't know, his birthday. It's like, no, no, no. They want to know that the missile works, and they schedule these things. Yes. And yes, of course, they're going to message around things because we do the same thing in the US. We schedule tests way out in the future.

And then when the test happens, we sort of message around it because like, why not take advantage of that? But the test would have happened one way or the other. I think that's the same thing here. I think they want to know that the system works. I do think possibly the level of corruption has... Emphasized their own requirement that they make sure that the systems work.

And they probably care that we also know. But this is not unlike what they did in 1980. They did it once for the DF-5. Because I think it's important to understand the trajectory That you fly when you reduce the range is not the same as the real one you would fly.

Aaron 14:15

Yeah.

Jeffrey 14:15

I'm using my finger instead of, you know, it's up. To do a loft.

Aaron 14:19

Down instead of the across.

Jeffrey 14:22

Right. And so the heat flux and the heat soak are going to be different. You probably want some real data. Actually, you know, with Thrusty, I've been trying to implement a module to model the heating. And I've been going through all the historical data about reentry vehicles on heating. It turns out it's really hard to get good reentry vehicle data.

Aaron 14:46

Because it's classified, or because we just don't have a lot of it, or both?

Jeffrey 14:50

Well, when you fire it, It smacks into the ground. It does. I see what you're saying. Right? Yeah. You have to fire it on a realistic trajectory, which maybe it's going to go in the drink. There are a whole bunch of different things. There was something called reentry F, which was an experiment the US did, which tried to artificially recreate those conditions with an object that was instrumented.

And then there are other reentry vehicle tests where they would like eject the mass simulator so it would get lighter and then like pop parachutes in order to like get the vehicle back. So I just think getting that kind of data is tough. And the Chinese aren't nearly as uptight about it as we were. But yeah, doing a realistic end-to-end test probably reveals a lot of stuff, not just on the reentry end, but on the whole performance of the system.

So yeah, I don't know, man. I think it's crazy to release a statement about how bad people are testing nuclear weapons. Yes, of course, it's terrible. But I don't think there's much to see here.

Aaron 16:13

I guess if I were to back out the signal, quote unquote, it has obviously nothing to do with Donald Trump's birthday, July 4th, or the World Cup. I'm going to go out on a limb there. But I think if there is a signal, it's that they're carrying out that as part of their updated approach to nuclear weapons is that they want to be more realistic in how they make assumptions and test those things.

Jeffrey 16:44

I think that's right. And this is, you know, we've now seen a realistic test of a DF-31. We're seeing a realistic test of the JL-2 or 3. Again, I think probably the 3, but don't really know. And I think there was also some reporting that they did a salvo test where they fired a number of ICBMs in close coordination, which, you know, given our work on modeling space-based interceptors, you understand what you...

Might want things to be simultaneous. You're previewing.

Aaron 17:11

In the business, that's called a curtain raiser.

Jeffrey 17:13

Yeah, indeed. So I think they're just testing systems in a more realistic way. And that's partly money, partly technology they can. But I do think Xi Jinping Leads a different China than Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin did. I think his dismantlement of collective leadership is part and parcel of a change in the way the Chinese government makes decisions and thinks about these problems.

I don't think it's radically different. Again, they're not testing at the same rate we do. But it is more like us than it used to be.

Aaron 18:11

I still often marvel at the design of their submarines.

Jeffrey 18:15

Oh, the turtle back?

Aaron 18:16

Yeah, I guess the big extension of the sail still suggests to me that they have – and maybe I'm wrong, and maybe this is my ignorance, is that the JL-2 is not nearly as good. I mean, it does the job, right? It flies. We presume it will be able to deliver warheads in the vicinity where it's aimed.

But the challenges of integrating them into submarines is still something off, despite what is obviously rapid –

Jeffrey 18:44

Technological progress over over yeah there was some testimony but before the u.s china economic and security review commission by sarah kirchberger who i don't know no not a friend of the pod but she's not i mean i i'm not an enemy of the pod who is who's Well, it's unclear to me. I guess German, right? And she quoted some things saying that Chinese commentators believe that the turtleback design was a sign that they were not, when they designed these submarines, that they were still a little bit behind, because those have kind of a, I guess, a noisy hydroacoustic signature.

So I think... It's not the world's most impressive system. I think it was really telling that the JL-2 couldn't reach targets in the US, but I think that was also part and parcel of that era of China, which is they were making ... They weren't really saying, oh, we have this military requirement. Let's design a system to go do that.

They were saying, let's design a system that is better than the one we have. It might be 20% better. It was, I think, fundamentally, I think their modernization was, and maybe to some extent still is, fundamentally divorced from any real requirements.

Aaron 20:20

How do you think they squeeze? Which, you know, not unlike us. Well, how do you think they squeeze the extra range out of the JL-2? They just stretch it a little bit? Bigger tank? Wider?

Jeffrey 20:32

Could be a lighter airframe, like a composite airframe. Could be maybe packing more stuff in. The US put the... When we went from the C, what was it? Was it? Oh, I can't remember. Did we start doing it with the C4 or the D5? But we've got the third stage that protrudes through the deck where the warheads are.

So you could do weird stuff like that. You know, hard to say. Maybe some minor improvements in propulsion.

Aaron 21:07

So did we hit it? I mean, is there anything else we need to discuss here? I mean, other than treating China like a normal nuclear power? Normal in air quotes, because none of this stuff is entirely normal.

Jeffrey 21:17

I think if you don't know anything about this, the big takeaway is this is an open ocean test. Every other test has been from the water into China and that limits the range. They wanted to do, I think, a realistic test at a realistic range. You do that, you got to fire it into the water. They did it.

They did it in 1980 with the DF-5. They did it two years ago with the DF-31. Now they're doing it with their submarine launch ballistic missile. I hope, I hope they stop at one for each of these systems. And does it foreshadow the NORCs? I mean, if you were the North Koreans, you really should do this. Yes.

Aaron 21:55

They're taking steps.

Jeffrey 21:57

I mean, we got the barge. We got all sorts of stuff over there. I mean, I do think for them, the tracking ships, if you do this, you want to get the data. I think that's the long pole in the tent. For the North Koreans is probably making sure they can instrument this stuff.

Aaron 22:16

All right. So I guess what we can look out for is when you and the team track down where those Chinese tracking ships were, if possible, and we can get a sense about where it fell in the vast South Pacific and whether or not it was just inside the nuclear weapons-free zone or sort of right smack in the middle.

Just a bit inside. All right, patreon.com slash acwpodcast. We didn't go off the rails, by the way. I'm doing my outro here. No, we're still on the rails. All right, so patreon.com slash acwpodcast. $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. Join the coolest podcast Slack channel in the world where you get to hang out with us virtually.

So with that, Jeffrey, thanks for doing this.

Jeffrey 23:01

Great to talk to you.