China Building Secret Nuclear Missile Launch Pads in Xinjiang Desert

China is building a slew of launch pads, bunkers, and communication nodes near an isolated nuclear silos in a remote desert in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) with the military’s longest-range missiles, satellite images show.

The vast military complex is taking shape to ensure no US first strike on China’s nuclear arsenal could reliably knock out the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to hit back.

China’s nuclear missiles can already hit any American city. The satellite images revealed over 80 launch pads that could be used by China’s expanding mobile missile launchers and air defence batteries.

The images also showed that the facility could be used for electronic warfare, satellite communications, and command-and-control operations. The scale of construction pointed to a sweeping expansion of hardened infrastructure designed to protect and operate China’s land-based nuclear forces.

Together, the network signalled a significant upgrade in Beijing’s efforts to ensure second-strike capability, underscoring intensifying nuclear competition with the US as tensions rise over issues such as Taiwan, according to reports.

The nuclear-armed missile infrastructure is being built on a large scale over several thousand square kilometres, a considerable enhancement and diversification of China’s strategic nuclear deterrent.

The infrastructure provides China with the ability to protect its desert silos to achieve the stated goal of staging a minimal but credible nuclear deterrence, a policy based on the capacity to retaliate if struck first.

While the PLA can fire nuclear weapons from submarines and aircraft, the ground-based facility in northwestern East Turkestan (occupied Xinjiang) region and Gansu province are at the core of the nuclear forces, the reports said.

The nuclear capability is the most important facet of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s military modernisation, a key to Beijing’s ‘No First Strike’ nuclear weapons policy.