Washington: The Pentagon has warned in a report that China is likely to have a stockpile of nearly 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, up from an estimated 400 at present. In its annual report to Congress on China’s ambitious military buildup, the Pentagon said Tuesday that over the next decade, Beijing aims to modernize, diversify and expand its nuclear forces.
It said that China’s current nuclear modernization exercise exceeds past modernization efforts in both scale and complexity. It added that China is investing in and expanding its land-, sea- and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and building the infrastructure needed to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces.
China, it said, is supporting this expansion by increasing its capacity to produce and separate plutonium by building fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities. In 2021, Beijing will likely accelerate its nuclear expansion, it said.
The Pentagon said it estimated China’s stockpile of operational nuclear weapons to exceed 400. The PLA plans to “basically complete modernisation” of its national defense and armed forces by 2035, the report said. “If China continues the pace of its nuclear expansion, it will amass a stockpile of approximately 1,500 warheads by the 2035 deadline.”
The official said the Chinese strategy is a determined effort to enhance and expand their national power by adapting at least aspects of the international order to suit their political system and national interests, as they define them.
“His aim is to expand his national power through both domestic and foreign policy initiatives. Therefore, the global security initiative that Xi Jinping took is one in which the PRC seeks to portray itself as a provider of global public goods. is,” said the senior defense official.
Officials said there have been more drastic and aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region, some of which the US would highlight as being dangerous. “Therefore PLA ships and aircraft have demonstrated an increase in unsafe and unprofessional behavior in the Indo-Pacific region, including – aerobatics for aircraft, – chaff dropping, other activities that make it difficult to maneuver safely for nearby aircraft. dangerous for the public,” the official noted.
Among other things, the report calls for an intensification of Chinese diplomatic, economic, political and military pressure against Taiwan. The report highlights increasing military pressure through 2021 and its increase in 2022, particularly associated with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
The Pentagon report also provides some very important new insights into how the Chinese military views the future of warfare. The Chinese military refers to system destruction warfare as the next method of warfare.
“They have also started discussing a new operational concept for themselves, which they call the core operational concept. It is called multi-domain precision warfare,” the official said.