BULLIES: Communist China’s 80th Anniversary Victory Parade: Nuclear Intimidation.
China’s English language propaganda mouthpiece Global Times stated that the massive Chinese DF-5C ICBM, displayed during the parade, had a range of 20,000-km and that it carried nuclear and conventional multiple independently targetable warheads. The DF-5C can reportedly carry 12 nuclear warheads (the Pentagon’s China military power report says the DF-5 can carry five.) In effect, it was advertising a nuclear threat to the entire world. The message was “do not resist Chinese aggression” or “aid its victims.” Xi Jinping has ordered that the Chinese military be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027. The unprecedented post-Cold War Chinese nuclear buildup appears directly connected to this objective.
The full Chinese nuclear Triad was displayed for the first time during the parade. It showcased the large new DF-61 ICBM. This missile came as a surprise. According to noted China expert Rick Fisher, the new DF-61 ICBM uses the same mobile launcher as the powerful DF-41 ICBM, underscoring that “…this new missile has new capabilities, perhaps more than 10 multiple warheads, or new multiple hypersonic glide vehicle warheads, again perhaps intended to overcome future U.S. Golden Dome defenses.” Janes’s credits the DF-61 with up to 12 nuclear warheads.
Fisher also noted that the newly displayed version of the DF-31 ICBM “…is interesting” because the “… DF-31BJ comes in a self-contained cold-launch tube, meaning the tubes can be stored, to be available for rapid reloading, and the silos do not have to be stressed for hot launches, making them cheaper and easier to replicate if required.” An analysis by the Federation of American Scientists also concluded that the DF-31BJ was a silo-based ICBM.
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Actually, in addition to the DF-61, according to U.S. government publications, China has three other MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs (the DF-41, the DF-31, and the JL-3). According to Joseph Trevithick, Deputy Editor of The War Zone, “The newly emerged DF-61 could still be just one of several all-new ICBM designs China has been working on.” STRATCOM Commander General Anthony Cotton reportedly stated in a closed Congressional hearing that China was developing a “new generation of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
Exit quote: “By comparison, the U.S. has one ICBM, the small 1970 vintage three warhead Minuteman III, reduced to one warhead by the New START Treaty, and which will be replaced by a single ICBM type, the Sentinel. which has not yet been flight tested and is experiencing major delays.”
Most of our missile-launched nuclear deterrent is on board 14 Ohio-class submarines that are aging out faster than their Columbia-class replacements — which carry fewer missiles and which we’ll build fewer of.