Home › Defence & Aerospace › China’s nuclear arsenal perhaps world’s largest – up to 10,000 warheads

China’s nuclear arsenal perhaps world’s largest – up to 10,000 warheads

By chankaiyee2 on July 25, 2013 • ( 2 )

China’s Second Artillery Corps: Unravel the Mystery of the world’s strongest conventional ballistic missile troops

Mil.huaniu.com says in its comprehensive report on July 24, 2013: “According to an article in Russian Military Messenger weekly on July 24 titled “China’s grand nuclear gift—China may have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world”, the author, a deputy director of the Russian Institute for Political and Military Analysis, believes that from the perspective of production capacity, there are at least a few thousand and even up to ten thousand nuclear warheads in China’s nuclear arsenal.

“The Russian media says that China has not revealed any official data about the size of its nuclear arsenal and is not expected to publish any data in the future. Beijing has no intention for discussion of the size and deployment of its nuclear weapons, but has merely announced that it has very few nuclear warheads. On that excuse, it firmly refuses to participate in any nuclear disarmament negotiations.”

Some western analysts believe that the number of China’s nuclear warheads does not exceed 250. “However, in the 1990s, China was able to make more than 140 nuclear warheads p.a. Even if some of the old warheads have been dismantled, the estimate of 250 warheads cannot even been regarded as an awkward joke.”

The article points out that judging by China’s production capacity, China has at least several thousand and even nearly ten thousand nuclear warheads.

As for the number of China’s ICBMs, judging by the production capacity of China’s military industrial enterprises and its huge underground tunnel system to cover its ICBMs, China perhaps has nearly one thousand ICBMs. Therefore, it is quite safe to say that China has a comparable or even larger nuclear arsenal than the United States and Russia.

Source: mil.huanqiu.com “Russian Media: China’s nuclear arsenal larger than UK and France, comparable to the US and Russia and perhaps world largest”