China could triple nuke arsenal, Pentagon says in report spotlighting submarine capabilities

China is expected to more than triple its arsenal of nuclear warheads to 1,500 by 2035, the Pentagon said in an annual report on the country’s military that also spotlighted its growing submarine capabilities and designs on self-ruled Taiwan.

In the report, which mainly focused on the China military last year, the U.S. Defense Department called the 2020s a “decisive decade” for the development of the People’s Liberation Army, while also warning that Beijing was aiming to transform the PLA into “a more credible military tool” by 2027 “as it pursues Taiwan unification.”

This year’s report — which says that Beijing "probably accelerated its nuclear expansion" in 2021 — comes amid growing U.S. concerns over China’s ongoing nuclear buildup. It said that China’s stockpile of nuclear warheads had risen above 400 in 2021, around double the estimated 200-plus in last year’s report, and that Beijing "will likely field a stockpile of about 1,500 warheads” by 2035.

A senior defense official speaking on background was quoted as saying that this year’s estimate did not imply a major acceleration in the growth of the nuclear stockpile compared with last year’s report, when the Pentagon assessed that China would likely possess at least 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

But the overall buildup was "too substantial to keep under wraps," the official said.

"It does raise questions about whether they're kind of shifting away from a strategy that was premised on what they referred to as a ‘lean and effective’ deterrent," the official said, referring to Beijing’s decadeslong policy of maintaining only the minimum number of nuclear weapons required for its national security.

Speaking at a news conference after the report’s release, the Pentagon spokesman pointed to proliferation and transparency as being the key U.S. concerns.

“The challenge here is, the more proliferation there is, the more concerning it is, the more destabilizing to the region it is,” Defense Department press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. “So, certainly, we would want to ensure from a ... regional stability standpoint, that we can maintain an open dialogue to ensure there's transparency and that we understand what the intent is behind this.”

China has so far resisted Washington’s calls to join arms control talks, including those involving the U.S. and Russia, saying that the two countries with the world’s largest arsenals should reduce their stockpiles first. The U.S. arsenal consists of 3,750 nuclear warheads as of September 2020, according to a State Department fact sheet.

Tong Zhao, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the move by China is driven by a political goal to demonstrate strategic power.

"Beijing has the expectation that a larger nuclear arsenal would help force the United States to accept the new reality of a risen China and thus give up the hope of containing China," Zhao said. "In this sense, to develop a larger nuclear warhead stockpile would have an important psychological impact on U.S. decision-makers."

While the warhead prediction garnered headlines, some observers have said that the number of missile launchers believed possessed by China could be a better gauge of its intentions.

According to the 2022 report, China increased the number of launchers for its intercontinental ballistic missiles to 300 from the estimated 100 a year earlier. It also boosted the number of launchers for intermediate-range weapons to 250 from 200, while keeping the number of launchers for its medium-range ballistic missiles steady at 250.

Taylor Fravel, a China expert and director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that the 1,500-by-2035 estimate “just seems to be a straight line projection” of roughly the production of 65 warheads per year, but he noted that a strict focus on just launchers could be misleading.

“One cannot just focus on launchers, because one does not know how many warheads each missile can carry,” he said, noting that the DF-41 ICBM, China’s most powerful missile with a range of 15,000 kilometers, as well as other mainstay and even perhaps some of its newer missiles, “can likely carry multiple warheads.”

“The main point, though, is that a major expansion is underway and, depending on the scope and pace, China could have quite a sizable arsenal by 2035,” Fravel said.

The report also confirmed details about China’s sea-based nuclear capabilities, including the Pentagon’s estimation that the Asian country “is conducting continuous at-sea deterrence patrols” with its six nuclear-powered Jin-class submarines, which are equipped to carry up to 12 JL-2 or JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

The fielding of newer, more capable and longer-range SLBMs such as the JL-3 — which has a range of more than 10,000 km — gives the Chinese Navy the ability to target the continental United States from certain littoral waters, allowing Beijing to consider operating in heavily protected “bastions” that enhance the survivability of its sea-based deterrent, the Pentagon said. The Bohai Sea is seen as the most likely option for this, but the missile may also be able to hit Hawaii and Alaska from the South China Sea.

Beijing has laid claim to most of the South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade flow every year, despite overlapping claims by Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei. China's militarization of a number of islands in the waters has stoked fears some of the outposts there could be used to restrict free movement in an area that includes sea lanes vital to the U.S., Japan and others.

Collin Koh, a research fellow and maritime security expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, called the U.S. assessment that the JL-3 has already been placed into service “a plausible one,” based on other reporting and open-source analysis.

“If the JL-3 has indeed been fielded and carries the range specifications as we know about, then this obviates the need for the Jin SSBNs to move further out eastward to the Pacific Ocean for launch, and this means being able to stay within the littoral confines of the South China Sea,” where they enjoy significant protection from nearby forces, he said.

This consequently means heightened operational risks for the U.S. and allied militaries operating in the waterway as they seek to keep tabs on Chinese submarine movements, given the density of PLA forces operating in the area.

“As it stands, such a ‘cat and mouse’ game is already taking place undersea,” Koh said. “This brings attendant risks of close encounters between these rival forces.”

On democratic Taiwan — which China says is a renegade province that must be unified, by force if necessary — the U.S. report noted the ruling Communist Party’s October congress, where President Xi Jinping cemented his rule and selected members of the Central Military Commission that oversees the PLA with “Taiwan-focused operational experience.”

That move comes as the Chinese military seeks to meet key military transformation targets set for 2027 and 2035 as part of its overall national modernization goal of fielding a “world-class” military by 2049.

China has “connected the PLA’s 2027 goals to developing the capabilities to counter the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region, and compel Taiwan’s leadership to the negotiation table on Beijing’s terms,” the report said.

While the senior Pentagon official stressed that there have been no signs of an imminent attack, the report said that amid changing public sentiment in Taiwan in recent years, Chinese leaders “may perceive a closing window of opportunity to subjugate Taiwan under Beijing’s ‘one country, two systems,’ framework.”

It also identified “a range of options for military campaigns against Taiwan,” including air and maritime blockades “to a full-scale amphibious invasion to seize and occupy some of its offshore islands or all of Taiwan, with varying degrees of feasibility and risks associated.”

In particular, the Pentagon noted that military exercises practicing the seizure of islands “became more frequent and realistic” last year, with the PLA conducting more than 20 naval exercises with an island-capture element, exceeding the 13 observed in 2020.

“Many of these exercises focused on combat realism and featured night missions, training in adverse weather conditions, and simultaneous multi-domain operations,” it said, adding that in one three-month period, the Chinese Navy also conducted more than 120 maritime training exercises.”

Information from Reuters added