Thread by @tshugart3

Ok, moving on to Part 2 of my thoughts on the 2023 China Military Power Report (CMPR).

We’ll jump straight into the PLA Rocket Force, which I think has some of the biggest news in this year’s report.

Let’s get straight into the top-line numbers. The report shows major increases in every category of China’s long range missiles.
Fielded ICBM launchers jump from 300 to 500, and the number of missiles goes up from 300 to 350 (I guess they haven’t filled all those silos yet).

While the number of launchers stays the same, the estimate of the number of intermediate-range missiles (i.e., the “Guam Killers”) goes from a somewhat vague “250+” to a solid 500.

I’ve said for years that if each DF-26 launcher had just one reload, we could be facing 400+ missiles. Well, here we are…

As I said at the time, numbers like that could change the DF-26 from a “carrier killer” to just a “ship killer” (from a report I wrote for @LowyInstitute).

This checks with images of test missile targets in China’s western desert shaped like U.S. destroyers, not just carriers: news.usni.org/2021/11/07/chi…

Moving on to MRBMs - what I’d call “Japan Killers” (too long-range to use on Taiwan, too short-range to hit Guam) the numbers are even more dramatic: going from “500+” to a solid 1000.

Yes, ONE THOUSAND missiles with enough range to hit anywhere in Japan (see the CSS-5 ring).

Whenever I hear someone say the PRC would be crazy to strike U.S. bases in Japan, I can’t help but think - sure, that might seem true to us, but they’ve been practicing doing it for years, and have put tremendous resources into building the force to do it. cnas.org/publications/r…

And with numbers like these, I can only think that they don’t only have US bases in mind…asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Inter…

In this year’s report, there’s a new discussion of the PLA’s underground facilities (UGFs). This is a relatively hard thing to spot w/ open source imagery, so DoD’s emphasis draws my attention.

This sort of hardening is something the US and allies are not doing nearly enough of.

Perhaps most interesting in the PLARF discussion is this reveal - that the PLA may be developing non-nuclear-tipped ICBMs.

I talked about this idea a couple of years ago as an “out-there” possibility, so I’m not too surprised to see it here.
There are a lot of very valuable and pretty soft U.S. targets in CONUS: think carriers & subs at their piers, valuable bombers on the ramp at their bases, etc.

I know some people will say “that would be crazy, we might respond with a nuke if we think it might be one, they’d never take the risk.”. But this is engaging in mirror-imaging, and not thinking through what that might really look like.

If you think it through from their perspective, what they could expect is that if they launch them in a fashion that clearly doesn’t threaten our nuclear forces or NC2, then a reasonable assumption would be that POTUS would wait and see what it was before launching nukes back.

This is yet another way that their massively-expanded nuclear arsenal comes in handy. There won’t be any way to execute a “splendid first strike” and disarm China’s nuclear forces, just in case - we’d have to ride it out and see what it was, or else face nuclear retaliation.

Moving on to those nuclear forces, one interesting word change is that DoD now says that China’s nuclear modernization efforts now “dwarf” rather than “exceed” those of the past decade. May give an unclas indication of the level of alarm at DoD over what it’s seeing.

DoD now estimates China has a stockpile of 500 nuclear warheads, up 100 from last year. It also moves up its longer timeline to “over 1,000 warheads” by 2030, vice “about 1,500” warheads by 2036.

DoD now also indicates that the huge expansion of China’s missile fields that was still in progress in 2022…

…it’s done, and they’re already loading missiles into the silos.

As for any “shell game” nonsense with those silo fields…

I’m confident the PLA will fill those silos, just a matter of time.

For China’s SSBNs, we now have confirmation that they aren’t just “equipped to carry” the longer-range JL-3 missile - rather, they ARE fielding the JL-3 on them.

Also, apparently they are continuing/restarting production of Type 094 SSBNs?

This is new in this year’s report - and news to me. 😮

Moving on to cyber and space systems, DoD has a new discussion of PRC cyber activity directed at DoD.

Anything cyber can get classified pretty quickly, so it’s notable to me that they’re talking about this in public.

As for satellites, apparently the PRC is up to 290 ISR satellites from 260 last year (a 10+% annual increase).

On the chem-bio front, there’s an interesting change in wording - that China has gone from having the “technical expertise” to weaponize CBW agents, to a statement that they “likely possess capabilities relevant” to CBW that pose a threat, which sounds quite a bit more real. 🤔

On the topic of defense contacts and exchanges, DoD makes the point that the PLA basically isn’t talking any more, despite many DoD attempts to restore contacts.

This is why when I see articles - in Western media - that talk about how the U.S. and China need to talk more, it just makes me wonder: Are you paying attention at all to the reality of the situation? foreignaffairs.com/china/america-…

DoD also adds a discussion of the PLA's risky and dangerous behavior - with more such incidents in the previous 2 years than in the previous decade.

There was a recent @washingtonpost story on just this topic that unfortunately got buried by what's going on in Gaza.
But this is important - this sort of thing could lead to a war that could make what's happening in Gaza pale in comparison. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Next up: a topic my followers will know is near and dear: China's use of roll-on/roll-off (RORO) civilian shipping to enable an otherwise-impossible invasion of Taiwan.

This time, the topic gets its own multi-page section, which indicates to me how seriously DoD takes it.

More specifically, me: on the left, 2 years ago in @WarOnTheRocks.

DoD, on the right, in this year's report.

Me, reading this year's report:

Would you like to know more? warontherocks.com/2021/08/mind-t…

Or perhaps, even more? warontherocks.com/2022/10/mind-t…

DoD provides lots of details on the PLA's 2022 RORO exercises, including that they apparently moved an entire Group Army via "civilian" shipping in a single exercise. 😯

They also discuss a major exercise from September 2022, that may have been this activity that I tracked at the time:

Lots of detail here on the exercise, which was a big one.

Also, apparently the relevant stern ramp modifications are becoming more commonplace, reducing the warning that will be available in the future if they start spooling up for an invasion.

The PLA has also been working specifically to practice working in ports with near-zero intact infrastructure.

This is the kind of thing I think of when someone tells me, "oh, well we'll just wreck their ports - and the ones on Taiwan so they can't use them." 😐

I'll wrap things up here with the overall air balance across the Taiwan Strait.

China gains 50 bombers, 50 transports, and 50 special mission (support) aircraft (150 mostly large aircraft!). Taiwan gains 20 transports and 220(?) special mission aircraft (guessing that's a typo).

In summary: the already-breakneck expansion of Chinese military capability seems to have, amazingly, picked up speed in 2022. As I've said before, we and our allies and partners need to get deadly serious—and quickly— about deterring the PRC military threat.