China’s military recently built two new multiple missile launch systems that appear capable of firing massive numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles at Taiwan or against regional U.S. and allied forces, according to a new Air Force think tank report.
The new launchers were identified in satellite images at a desert location east of the city of Jilantai in China’s northwestern Inner Mongolia province and described as a significant new military capability, the report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute states.
The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force set up what the report identified as a previously unknown fixed launch system at the Jilantai missile training site.
The system appears designed for firing large numbers of missiles and different types from ground-based multi-cell vertical launch tubes.
“A conventional quick strike capability, like that provided by a vertical launch system, could make PLA leadership more confident in their ability to compel Taiwan and U.S. behaviors during a crisis by threatening or conducting rapid preparatory strikes or counter-intervention fires in the early stages of a conflict,” the report said.
The new system uses a shorter depth for launch tubes than other silos built for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), “suggesting that it may support short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), and cruise missiles,” the report said.
The PLA arsenal of those types of missiles is mostly conventionally armed and the new launcher likely will be used to conduct rapid missile firings against Taiwan or against American and allied forces that militarily defend the island, the report said.
Tom Shugart, a military analyst at the Center for New American Security, called the discovery of the new launchers an important and ominous development.
“Bottom line: the PLA Rocket Force appears to be testing a land-based fixed multiple-missile launch system, for up to [medium-range ballistic missile]-sized missiles — a system most useful for a first strike,” Mr. Shugart said on X.
The mass missile firing capability is designed to influence U.S. strategic decision-making by raising the cost of defending Taiwan against a PLA assault, the report said.
“The capability to rapidly launch fires against multiple targets on Taiwan or against U.S. and allied targets could be used during peacetime to deter U.S. troop deployments within the First Island Chain or deepening military cooperation with Taiwan, or it could be used to compel the United States from intervening in a Taiwan crisis,” the report said. Fires is military jargon for missile and other attacks.
The construction of the new launch tubes began in 2022 and was nearly complete by late 2023. One spy satellite image from January in the report shows the launchers completed with a closure door installed.
The launchers suggest the PLARF is preparing to deploy the launchers with combat units, the report said.
China’s military does not distinguish whether its missiles are armed with conventional or nuclear warheads, although the report said the new launcher most likely will be designed for large-scale conventional strikes.
According to the report, the missile launch sites are significantly smaller than the more than 300 ICBM launch silos discovered in the region in 2021 by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Those three ICBM fields are located in Yumen and Hami in the western desert, and Inner Mongolia at Hanggin Banner. The fields, which include DF-31, were central to U.S. government efforts to identify what has been called an unprecedented Chinese nuclear missile expansion.
Based on the depth of the new missile launchers, the report estimates they could be used for medium-range DF-21 missiles that the PLA has adapted for use as precision-guided anti-ship missiles as well as traditional land strike systems, the report said.
Another likely missile to be deployed in the multiple launcher is the DF-17, China’s first deployed hypersonic missile with speeds and maneuverability to defeat missile defenses, the report said.
“It is also highly likely that this launch structure could easily accommodate [short-range ballistic missiles] and cruise missiles,” the report said.
The new launchers could enhance the large numbers of missiles deployed near Taiwan, analysts say.
The PLA has deployed over 1,000 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles and around 600 land-attack cruise missiles within range of the island.
Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. James Adams told Congress in written testimony in April that the Chinese military is “expanding their missile inventories and aggressively pursuing new systems, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, to support their nuclear strategies of coercion and deterrence and to complicate U.S. defenses.”
“China is rapidly advancing its military modernization efforts and developing capabilities across all warfare domains that could enable its military to seize Taiwan by force, project power across the first island chain, and disrupt U.S. attempts to intervene in a regional conflict,” he told the House Armed Services subcommittee on intelligence and special operations.
The missile training base near Jilantai is used by PLA troops to conduct training exercises and launches for nuclear and conventional missile systems, the report said.
Deploying large numbers of the new multiple missile launchers could allow the PLA to “rapidly escalate” from a quarantine or blockade of Taiwan to “conducting elements of a massive preparatory fires campaign against targets on Taiwan, U.S. bases in the first island chain, or U.S. Navy task groups if positioned along the coast,” the report said.
The report, written by CASI senior researcher and China expert Eli Tirk, stated that fixed launchers are difficult to conceal from enemy sensors and hard to defend since they can be attacked after first launch.
However, an expansive investment in the mass missile launch capability would be destabilizing and may provide PLA commanders with a significant “use-or-lose” incentive to escalate during a crisis, the report said.
Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, stated in a 2024 report that the 800-square-mile Jilantai training base was significantly expanded with at least 16 new ICBM silos under construction and special tunnels that can be used to conceal missile launch units or loading operations.
“The construction of more than a dozen silos for modern solid-fuel missiles at Jilantai indicates that China may be seeking to increase reliance on silo-based missiles in its nuclear posture,” he said.
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