The Pentagon expects China to have an arsenal of at least 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, according to a new report, with the U.S.’ top military official on Wednesday calling the pacing threat of Beijing a “really significant” challenge for the next 10 to 20 years.
The projected nuclear stockpile detailed in the department’s latest annual report on China’s military activities, released Wednesday, is greater than what was predicted in last year’s report and would represent an increase of five times over the 200 warheads the country is estimated to maintain currently.
“Throughout 2020, the [Chinese military] continued to pursue its ambitious modernization objectives, refine major organizational reforms, and improve its combat readiness in line with those goals. This includes [China] developing the capabilities to conduct joint long-range precision strikes across domains, increasingly sophisticated space, counterspace, and cyber capabilities, and accelerating the large-scale expansion of its nuclear forces,” the Pentagon writes in its report.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke earlier in the day on the Pentagon’s view of China as the “pacing threat” to U.S. national security, and cited Beijing’s rapid military modernization overhaul and effort to develop new weapon systems, fighter aircraft, submarines, satellites, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
“We’re witnessing, in my view, one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed,” Milley said during a discussion at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington, D.C. “If we, the United States military, don’t do a fundamental change to ourselves in the coming 10 to 15 to 20 years then we’re going to be on the wrong side of a conflict with China.”
On ICBMs specifically, the report says China is developing capabilities to “improve its nuclear-capable missile forces and will require increased nuclear warhead production, partially due to the incorporation of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle capabilities.”
The Pentagon notes China has begun building at least three solid-fueled ICBM silo fields, which officials said could hold hundreds of individual nuclear silos, and that Beijing may be on track to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027.
A version of this story first appeared in the Exchange Monitor’s affiliate publication, Defense Daily.
