China’s rapid large-scale buildup of nuclear missiles, submarines, bombers, including an orbiting nuclear strike weapon, is increasing the danger of nuclear war, according to a study.
The bipartisan group of specialists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California is warning that the U.S. is ill-prepared to deal with what are now two peer nuclear powers — China and Russia — must bolster deterrence. The laboratory is funded by the Energy Department and previously took part in designing nuclear weapons.
Analysts at the laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research concluded in their 71-page report that the Biden administration’s plans and policies are insufficient and must be changed to reflect new nuclear dangers that are “real” and “rising.”
The report calls for adding nuclear warheads to existing submarine-launched ballistic missiles, building a new nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missile, and preparing to deploy new long-range Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles on road-mobile launchers.
The current U.S. strategic triad consisting of aging land-based missiles, missile submarines, and aerial bombers is “only marginally sufficient to meet today’s requirements” for deterring China and Russia,” the report said. “For tomorrow’s requirements, the deficiencies are even more striking. The United States should plan and prepare to deploy additional warheads and bombs from the reserve it has maintained for such a possibility.”
While the Biden administration has pushed to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its military strategy, both China and Russia are increasing reliance on their strategic forces.
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The February 2022 agreement between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to increase strategic cooperation with “no limits” provides multiple ways for both nations to coordinate on policies to challenge U.S. deterrence forces, the report said, forcing U.S. planners to divide their attention and resources between two regions. Coordinated Chinese-Russian action could also divide U.S. and its allies, slow power projection and threaten nuclear escalation to coerce Washington.
“These are all facets of the problem of concerted nuclear-backed aggression,” the report said.“The sum of these geopolitical parts is troubling to us but the whole is potentially catastrophic. From the geopolitical perspective, the risk of major power war is real and appears to be rising.”
The nonpartisan study group was made up of 18 nuclear and strategic specialists, including retired Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler, a former Strategic Command commander.
Former Pentagon official and China expert Elbridge Colby, who took part in the study panel, called its conclusions a “clarion call” that “shows the urgency of grappling with this profound challenge.”
‘Breakout’
The unclassified report provides the most extensive details published to date on what the U.S. Strategic Command has called a Chinese nuclear “breakout.”
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That weapons expansion ended 30 years of Beijing maintaining a minimal nuclear deterrent that in the past was not a factor for U.S. war planners, who focused on maintaining the balance of strategic forces with a far better-armed Russia.
The Pentagon described in its most recent annual report on the Chinese military a growing nuclear warhead stockpile that is expected to reach around 1,500 warheads by 2036 — up from around 200 warheads less than a decade ago.
The current U.S. nuclear stockpile is fewer than 1,500 deployed strategic warheads with many more in storage, and Russia’s warhead stockpile is said to include 1,500 warheads or more. Both were supposed to limit deployed warheads to 1,550 under the terms of the New START arms treaty, Mr. Putin announced recently that Moscow will no longer abide by the limits, despite the treaty remaining in force until 2026.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, said the nuclear study accurately describes the new nuclear threat posed by China and Russia.
“For too long Washington has reacted naively to Beijing and Moscow’s stated nuclear ambitions, ignored warning signs as they have built up their nuclear forces and engaged in nuclear coercion, and stubbornly held on to treaty relics of the Cold War to maintain a false sense of security,” the Colorado Republican said.
The most worrying element of the study is that it reveals the inadequacy of the U.S. capability and will to deter China and Russia, said Mr. Lamborn, calling on the Biden administration to confer with Congress on ways to address the rising challenge posed by Beijing.
“The stark findings of this report and the uncompromising recommendations to resolve them should be a call to action that if we do not act now, we will certainly lose in the conflicts to come,” he said.
Brad Roberts, the study group chairman, said the report was produced at the request of retiring Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, to generate new thinking regarding the impact of China‘s growing nuclear arsenal on deterrence.
“We brought together a diverse and bipartisan group of experts to think through the problem and needed responses,” Mr. Roberts told The Washington Times. “In framing the problem, we distinguish between the near-term requirement to address China’s three new missile silo fields and the longer-term challenge of uncertainty about the scale and attributes of China’s nuclear force in 2035 and beyond.”
To counter Beijing‘s new ICBMs, the panel recommended uploading warheads that were removed from missiles under the New START accord.
For the longer term deterrence of the Chinese, “we emphasize the need to strengthen extended nuclear deterrence with the deployment of additional and more diverse capabilities, including SLCM/N,” he said, referring to the submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile.
China’s nuclear buildup, according to the report, appears unconstrained and could exceed 1,500 warheads in the future. The expansion of the Chinese nuclear force “must be described as massive and rapid,” the report’s authors said.
By 2036, the Chinese nuclear force will include more than 1,338 strategic warheads, including 522 missile launchers armed with 1,140 warheads, mainly located in three large fields being built in western China. The intercontinental missiles will include 390 in silos and another 132 in road-mobile launchers, while the submarine force will include 84 missiles armed with 252 warheads, and the bomber force will exceed 18 warheads.
One of the more worrisome Chinese strategic weapons for U.S. planners is a polar-orbiting missile called a “fractional orbital bombardment system.” The Chinese military is expected to deploy “several” of these weapons by 2036, the report said.
“Such a system poses a potential decapitating threat to the U.S. nuclear command and control system,” the report said, adding, “China’s disregard of the strategic instabilities generated by such weapons is especially troubling.”
Surpassing the U.S.
The orbiting nuclear bomb, tested in 2021, bolsters fears that Beijing over time plans to build a nuclear force larger than that of the United States. Mr. Xi has already affirmed that nuclear weapons are central to a strategy of making China the leading world power by 2049.
The Chinese leader, who recently was given a precedent-breaking third five-year presidential term and head of the Communist Party, stated in 2012 that he is concentrating on broadening national power by “building a socialism that is superior to capitalism, and laying the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position.”
In addition to fielding large numbers of strategic warheads, the Chinese military also is deploying a “very large” force of theater nuclear weapons on missiles capable of firing either nuclear or conventional warheads, the report said.
“This force will give China an array of limited theater nuclear options it has not had before — options that are arguably inconsistent with China’s stated policy of no-first-use,” the report said, adding that the weapons would give Beijing the ability to adopt a coercive nuclear use strategy like Russia enjoys today.
China’s theater nuclear missile force is expected to increase from 224 today to 450 by 2036.
Unlike China, Russia’s nuclear forces and doctrine are more public. The Kremlin places strategic forces at the center of its military and political strategy, and their use for political coercion in war, as with recent threats over NATO support for Ukraine.
“Our concern about the potential for a Russian miscalculation of U.S. resolve has grown significantly with President Putin’s catastrophic miscalculation of the resolve and capability of the people of Ukraine to resist Russian aggression,” the report said.
Russia also in the past employed an automatic nuclear counterattack system called “dead hand,” designed to fire missiles to predesignated targets automatically if a nuclear attack is detected and human control is lost. The study group report said Russia has not said whether the upgrade of its nuclear command and control system will result in canceling the dead hand system.
“Dead hand systems are especially troubling because their thresholds for use and other characteristics are not confidently known and may not be fully reliable,” the report said.
Nuclear peer
The report’s authors contend that the Biden administration’s recent nuclear posture review sent two unsettling signals to China and Russia.
“The first is the commitment to continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy; at a time when President Putin and Chairman Xi have increased the role, this U.S. commitment may be received in both capitals as confirmatory proof of what they believe: that the United States is in decline and retreat. It certainly troubles many allies,” the report said.
The report, “China’s Emergence as a Second Nuclear Peer,” concludes that the U.S. must act quickly with China on course to join the United States and Russia as the world’s third nuclear superpower.
The report states that for the first time in American history the nation is faced with two major nuclear powers in China and Russia that could use their nuclear arsenals for geopolitical coercion or, in a worst-case scenario in actual nuclear combat, individually or together.
“If the United States proves incapable of adjusting to these new circumstances, its ability to shape the nuclear security environment will further decline,” the report concludes. “This would only fuel the perception in Beijing and Moscow of American decline and retreat. It is in our collective interest that this not be so.”
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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