Even if the ~300 new DF-41 silos discovered last year are each armed with only 3 warheads (the missile can carry ~10 max), and no other silos are built/discovered, that’s still 900 warheads on top of the ~400 already in service.
I’m not well-versed in this area but reading through the Chinese nuclear notebook from November 2021 they seem kind of skeptical of claims like this and point out that China could also be intending the silos to be a “shell game”. Quoting from the notebook:
And in November 2021, the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress projects that China might have 700 deliverable warheads by 2027, and possibly as many as 1,000 by 2030 (US DefenseDepartment 2021, 90).
Such increases would require the deployment of a significant number of additional launchers, including MIRV-equipped missiles. It seems likely that the new projection assumes that China plans to deploy large numbers of MIRV’ed missiles in the new missile silo fields that are currently under construction. But there are several unknown factors. First, how many of the new silos will be loaded? China might build more silos than missiles to create a “shell game” that would make it harder for an adversary to target the missiles. Second, how many of the missiles will be MIRV’ed, and with how many warheads? Many non-official sources attribute very high numbers of warheads to MIRVed missiles (for example, 10 warheads per DF-41), but the actual number will likely be lower to maximize the range of the missile (perhaps three to five each, perhaps less). This is because we believe that the main purpose of the massive silo construction program is to safeguard China’s retaliatory capability against a surprise first-strike. And the main purpose of the MIRV program is probably to ensure penetration of US missile defenses, rather than to maximize the warhead loading of the Chinese missile force. As the United States strengthens its offensive forces and missile defenses, China will likely further modify its nuclear posture to ensure the credibility of its retaliatory strike force, including deploying hypersonic glide vehicles.
Would you disagree with that assessment?
I know a lot of ways to reduce China-US nuclear risk even without non-starters to the pro-democracy crowd (e.g. giving up defence commitments to certain US allies). There seems to be some major civilizational inadequacy in this area; i.e. obvious ways to have a major reduction on the risk that just nobody’s bothered to implement. I don’t think economic tensions/trade wars are very relevant to nuclear risk compared to more important factors in the grand scheme of things to be frank.
I agree that the trade war issue is probably low impact, but I focused on it because it has few downsides and potential upsides for nuclear risk. What ways to reduce China-US nuclear risk do you suggest? From what I’ve seen so far (which is admittedly very little) it seems like there are very few feasible options to reduce nuclear risk with China, and most available options involve a lot of unknowns with regard to implementation and effectiveness and potentially have significant downsides.
I’m not well-versed in this area but reading through the Chinese nuclear notebook from November 2021 they seem kind of skeptical of claims like this and point out that China could also be intending the silos to be a “shell game”. Quoting from the notebook:
Would you disagree with that assessment?
I agree that the trade war issue is probably low impact, but I focused on it because it has few downsides and potential upsides for nuclear risk. What ways to reduce China-US nuclear risk do you suggest? From what I’ve seen so far (which is admittedly very little) it seems like there are very few feasible options to reduce nuclear risk with China, and most available options involve a lot of unknowns with regard to implementation and effectiveness and potentially have significant downsides.