NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
A Taiwanese government official provided new details on the test flight of a nuclear-capable, submarine-launched Chinese ballistic missile on Monday that drew widespread regional and U.S. condemnation.
Joseph Wu, secretary general of the Taiwan National Security Council, posted a map on social media showing the flight path of what he called a JL-2 underwater-launched missile.
“It’s a provocation that destabilizes the #IndoPacific,” he posted on X. “#China just proved itself again to be a bully on the block.”
Analysts note that Taiwan’s intelligence on China has been accurate in the past.
According to the map, the missile was fired from a submarine in coastal waters off the southern Guangdong province coast and flew southeast over the northern tip of the Philippines and into the South Pacific.
Along the way, the missile passed south of the U.S. island territory of Guam, then north of the archipelago nation of Palau and near the microstate island of Nauru before impacting in the sea.
Estimates of the range are that the missile traveled about 4,000 miles, within what the Pentagon gauges as the JL-2’s range.
The JL-2 has a range of up to 7,456 miles and can be armed with a single megaton warhead or up to eight multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, with yields of 20 kilotons to 150 kilotons. A kiloton is the explosive power a thousand tons of TNT.
The missiles are deployed on six People’s Liberation Army Jin-class nuclear submarines.
China’s government has not disclosed any details about the test, highlighting the extreme secrecy surrounding what U.S. officials have called an unprecedented nuclear buildup.
The State Department said it monitored the test closely and criticized Beijing for nuclear proliferation and failing to engage in arms control talks on its strategic weapons.
“Beijing’s rapid and opaque nuclear weapons buildup is of great concern to the region and the world,” State Department spokesman Tommy Piggot said in a statement.
Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell said the latest missile test differed from the last major ICBM test of a DF-31 missile into the Pacific in 2024.
“Finding a submerged ballistic missile submarine is much more difficult than finding a road-mobile or fixed silo ICBM,” said Capt. Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief.
“This launch from a SSBN [nuclear missile submarine] demonstrates the Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to a ’strategic nuclear deterrence’ capability, or in other words, a ’first strike’ capability,” he said.
“Monday’s ICBM/SLBM test launch into the South Pacific, the second in two years after a 44 year gap, clearly signals the CCP’s intent to fully operationalize their ’first strike’ capability as they roll out a new generation of SSBNs, like the new Type 096-class that are expected to be operational in 2027,” Capt. Fanell said.
The test highlights what military leaders have called China’s nuclear “breakout” that includes hundreds of new land-based multiple warhead missiles in silos and a new H-20 strategic bomber.
The combination of new forces “makes it undeniable that the CCP has built a nuclear-triad — submarines, silos, bombers — capable of successfully launching a nuclear first strike against America,’ Capt. Fanell said. “America has undeniably entered a new Cold War, one that could go hot at the drop of a hat.”
CENTCOM targets Iranian small boats
Renewed U.S. military strikes against Iran on Tuesday included what U.S. Central Command said were precision bombing against more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the Strait of Hormuz.
The strike followed Iranian attacks against three commercial ships transiting the strait. The ships were identified by CENTCOM as the Marshall Islands-flagged M/T Al Rekayyat, Saudi Arabia-flagged M/T Wedyan, and Liberian-flagged M/T Cyprus Prosperity.
Many of Iran’s missile-equipped small boats were sold to Tehran by China and North Korea beginning in the early 1990s, according to a report by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
The IRGC also has deployed scores of missile and torpedo fast attack boats built indigenously and copied from foreign purchases.
China provided the IRGC with “a fleet” of Houdong-class missile boats along with C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles, the ONI report said.
“The Houdongs provided the IRGC[navy] with a legitimate naval fleet, but the vulnerabilities of these new platforms would become apparent before they were delivered,” the ONI said in a 2017 report, noting that 13 missile boats similar to the Houdongs were sunk during the 1991 Gulf war.
While dated, the report provides key details on the numbers and types of IRGC small attack boats and the strategy behind their use.
“This observation likely drove the IRGCN’s interest in developing smaller, faster platforms armed with heavier weapons, such as the C-14 missile patrol boat first acquired from China around 2000, followed by the acquisition of 30 torpedo boats from North Korea shortly after,” the ONI said.
The report identified seven IRGC navy based strung along the Iranian coast from Bandar Mashahr at the northern part of the Persian Gulf to Chahbahar at the border with Pakistan on the Gulf of Oman.
Those facilities were likely targets of the latest CENTCOM attacks.
The ONI report said the IRGC navy has adopted an asymmetric warfare doctrine that emphasizes speed, numbers, stealth, survivability and lethality.
The naval acquisition element for the hardline Islamic forces over the past 10 years has included fast attack craft, small boats, anti-ship cruise missiles and mines.
“Considering it began as a fleet of lightly armed small boats in the 1980s, IRGCN acquisitions in each of these four core areas have greatly improved its capabilities,” the report said.
“Individually, these improvements cannot compete with western technology. However, taken together, they could create an overall capability that is greater than the sum of its parts, particularly when employed in tight operational spaces like the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”
The Houdongs have been upgraded with an Iranian derivative of the C-802 called the Ghadar.
From 1996 to 2006, the IRGC purchased about 46 fast attack boats from China and North Korea that are armed with torpedoes, short-range anti-ship missiles and capable of reaching speeds of 40 to 50 knots.
The North Korean vessels purchased included four types of torpedo boats — two that are submersible and semisubmersible.
Iran later copied the North Korean Peykaap-class boat, and has been domestically producing it as a missile boat armed with Nasr anti-ship cruise missiles, based on the Chinese C-704 missile.
Another small Iranian naval weapon is what ONI calls a fast inshore attack craft — lightly armed small boats that have been a mainstay of the IRGC navy since it was first set up in the 1980s.
These boats are the most numerous of all IRGC vessels and are usually armed with guns and rockets.
The report said that “used en masse, these vessels are capable of harassing merchant shipping and conducting swarm tactics during a force-on-force naval engagement.”
The main small boat is called the Siraj-1, which is a copy of the British design “Bladerunner” that Tehran claims is the fastest military vessel in the world.
“In the future; however, the Siraj-1 will likely incorporate additional armament: either torpedoes or [anti-ship cruise missiles],” the ONI said.
Naval mines also are key element of the IRGC strategy in closing the Strait of Hormuz.
ONI said the IRGC has a large inventory of contact and influence mines.
“Though it possesses a number of larger vessels that can be used to lay mines, the IRGCN has integrated its philosophy of using smaller, faster vessels into its mine-laying strategy,” the report said.
A large number of Ashoora small boats are outfitted with mine rails capable of holding at least one mine. The IRGC strategy seeks to rapidly place small numbers of mines and while improving the survivability of the mine-laying boats, the report said.
The ONI estimated in 2017 that the IRGC had at least 80 missile and torpedo boats, including 10 Houdongs, 45 Peykapp missile and torpedo boats, 10 MK 13 missile patrol boats, five C 14 missile patrol boats and 10 Tir patrol boats.
Taiwan sounds alarm on Chinese ’expansionism’
China is expanding its dictatorial communist system throughout the Asia-Pacific region and will continue stepped up aggressiveness unless the world takes action to halt it, a senior Taiwan security official said Wednesday.
Lii Wen, a deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council, told an international forum that Beijing’s strategy for increased regional control is “incremental salami slicing” — gradually expanding its power and influence.
The maritime strategy involves Chinese ships seeking dominance over areas of the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and South China Sea by asserting expansive claims to disputed waters and islands.
China is “constantly pushing the limits through an incremental salami-slicing approach,” Mr. Lii said Wednesday, describing the activities as “authoritarian expansionism” through military, coast guard, research and maritime militia vessels.
The goal is to transform international waters into Chinese-controlled internal seas.
“If the world fails to voice our concerns or take action, this expansionism will only continue,” Mr. Lii said.
Another Taiwanese official, Ocean Affairs Minister Kuan Bi-ling, said during the same conference that Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines are confronted with a similar pattern of Chinese actions designed to pressure regional states below the level of conventional warfare.
“When a series of actions accumulates, it may create an entirely new status quo,” Ms. Kuan said during the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei.
International partners need to adopt a “shared understanding of the status quo” and develop coordinated responses to prevent a crisis.
The comments followed a standoff between Japanese and Chinese warships near Japan’s uninhabited Senkaku Islands that China is claiming as its territory.
Both nations claimed to have driven off each other’s vessels during the incident.
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