China’s Nuclear Arsenal Expansion
Marshall Billingslea, who served as a presidential arms control official during the Trump administration, recently alerted Congress about the swift expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, dubbing it “Arms Race 2.0.”
In his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month, Mr. Billingslea recalled providing a classified briefing in 2020 regarding China’s initial stages of significantly increasing its nuclear stockpile.
“Five years later, my previous assessment now appears overly optimistic,” he stated in his prepared remarks. “China has advanced at a breathtaking pace.”
The Chinese military has reportedly deployed over 600 operational warheads and is on track to reach 1,000 by 2030. Mr. Billingslea anticipates that Beijing could possess as many as 1,500 warheads by 2035.
This figure is comparable to the current arsenals of both the United States and Russia, with Mr. Billingslea suggesting that China may ultimately surpass these numbers significantly.
The expansion includes three new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fields established in recent years, bringing the total number of silo launchers to approximately 400.
“That exceeds our own silo count,” he noted. Additionally, China has been found constructing 30 new silos for its DF-5 ICBMs in central-eastern mountainous regions. The upcoming DF-5C model is expected to carry a multimegaton warhead or potentially be equipped with ten smaller warheads.
The United States currently lacks any similar megaton-class warhead capabilities.
Moreover, new strategic developments include low-yield warheads and a fractional orbital bombardment system that could be utilized in a first-strike scenario aimed at decapitation.
