China is increasing its nuclear weapons stockpile faster than expected in Washington; The PRC has over 500 nuclear warheads and will receive more than 1 thousand by 2030, the Pentagon report says.
“In 2022, China continued to rapidly build up its nuclear forces. According to the US Department of Defense, China had more than 500 ready-to-use nuclear warheads as of May 2023; it is producing them faster than previous estimates,” says the annual document for Congress on the development of China’s armed forces.
According to the report, by 2030 China will have more than 1 thousand nuclear warheads. At the same time, in 2022, the Chinese authorities have probably completed the construction of three complexes with more than 300 new missile silos, some of which have already been loaded with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), Interfax reports.
The Pentagon believes that China is expanding the land, sea and air components of its nuclear forces and is developing new types of ICBMs. In the United States, it is assumed that China may be working on an ICBM that will be equipped with non-nuclear warheads: such weapons can be used against targets in the mainland United States, in the states of Alaska and Hawaii.
The report’s authors also claim that Beijing is increasing pressure on the authorities in Taiwan, on China’s neighboring countries, and is acting more and more aggressively against US aircraft in international airspace, where Chinese aircraft have made sharp maneuvers against American forces more than 180 times.
Source: Rosbalt
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