China to arm subs with nukes that can hit US

Sea patrols could begin by end of the month, report says

HONG KONG — China is preparing to arm its stealthiest submarines with nuclear missiles that could reach the United States, cloaking its arsenal with the invisibility needed to retaliate in the event of an enemy strike.

Fifty years after China carried out its first nuclear test, patrols by the almost impossible-to-detect Jin class submarines armed with nuclear JL-2 ballistic missiles will give President Xi Jinping greater agility to respond to an attack.

The nuclear-powered subs will probably conduct initial patrols with the missiles by the end of December, “giving China its first credible sea-based nuclear deterrent,” according to an annual report to Congress submitted in November by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Deploying the vessels will burnish China’s prestige as Xi seeks to end what he calls the “cold war” mentality that resulted in U.S. dominance of AsiaPacific security. Since coming to power, Xi has increased military spending with a focus on longerrange capacity, including plans to add to the country’s tally of a single aircraft carrier.

“For the first time in history, China’s nuclear arsenal will be invulnerable to a first strike,” said independent strategist Nicolas Giacometti, who has written analysis for The Diplomat and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s the last leap toward China’s assured nuclear-retaliation capability.”

China’s nuclear defense strategy is engineered to provide retaliation capability in the event of attack from nuclear-powered nations as far away as the U.S. and also from Russia and India, according to Felix Chang, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

While China doesn’t view North Korea as a direct nuclear risk, officials are concerned about what might happen if North Korea threatened South Korea or Japan and the region became unstable, Chang said.

China’s nuclear-armed submarines will be “useful as a hedge to any potential nuclear threats, including those from North Korea, even if they are relatively small,” he said.

The deployment of the submarines could pressure China to assure foreign militaries that its navy chiefs and political leaders can communicate with and control them. Chinese and U.S. ships and planes are coming into greater proximity in the Pacific as China asserts its claims to territory in the South China Sea and East China Sea, risking near misses or a clash.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in January that ex-President Hu Jintao “did not have strong control” of the People’s Liberation Army. The “best example,” Gates said, was China’s rollout of its J-20 stealth fighter during a visit he made in January 2010. The event seemed to catch Hu unaware, Gates said.

Since coming to power Xi has tightened his grip on the military, taking over as head of the Central Military Commission in November 2012, when he became Communist Party chief. Hu waited about two years before becoming chairman of the commission.

“China is going to have to reassure their adversaries that those submarines are under positive control at all times,” said Malcolm Davis, an assistant professor of China-Western relations at Bond University in Australia.

“Positive control” refers to the procedures to ensure the CMC’s absolute control of its nuclear assets, such as the authorization codes it would send to submarines, where, after verification by the commander and probably two other officers, missiles would be launched.

“It demands that China set up appropriate command and control infrastructure to ensure that the CMC can keep in touch with the submarines, even when they are at sea and under the water,” Davis said. “The U.S., U.K., France and Russia all maintain such communications capabilities for ensuring positive control” of their submarines at sea.

By assuring potential enemies that weapons will only be fired if ordered by central command, China’s military would increase the deterrent value of its nuclear-armed submarines, he said.

China’s defense ministry did not reply to questions about when regular patrols by nuclear-armed Jin class submarines would begin, or China’s nuclear strategy.

The modernization of China’s nuclear forces is focused on improving the capacity to deter other nu- clear powers, said metti, speaking by from Brussels.

In 2006, China introduced the land-based mobile DF-31A ballistic missiles, whose 6,959-mile range could reach the U.S.

In comparison to the land-based launchers, nuclear-powered ballisticmissile submarines that rarely need to surface are much better at hiding.

China has three of those and is likely to add two Giacophone more by 2020, according to the Commission’s report. Each could carry 12 JL-2 missiles.

The JL-2’s range of about 4,598 miles means China could conduct nuclear strikes against Alaska if it launched the missiles from waters near China; against Alaska and Hawaii if launched from waters south of Japan; against Alaska, Hawaii and the western U.S. if fired from waters west of Hawaii; and against all 50 states if launched from east of Hawaii, the report said.

“The big scoop would be determining where those submarine patrols will take place,” Chang said.

For the missiles to reach Hawaii or the continental U.S., the submarines would need to foray into the western Pacific and beyond, which Davis said would be “more challenging because they’d have to run the gauntlet of U.S. anti-submarine capabilities.”