Chinese will soon have nuclear subs in South China Sea - from TRUNEWS

(TRUNEWS) China is beefing up its nuclear arsenal and may send ballistic-missile submarines out to sea for patrols with live rockets.

If their goals are reached, China will have a strike capability only matched by Russia and the U.S., and will possess what is called a nuclear triad – ground, air and sea-launched nuclear weapons, as reported by The Daily Beast. 

“The theory is that a diverse array of delivery systems creates survivability by complicating a first strike,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear geopolitics with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

It is harder for an enemy to wipe out all the weapons in a first strike, so it serves as a deterrent.

China retains several hundred warheads, but it is still projected to be far less than the U.S. and Russia.

In recent months, China has stepped-up its posturing.  On Thursday, they carried out an intercept of a U.S. military plane over the South China Sea, which was described as “unsafe” by officials at the Pentagon.  TRUNEWS has reported on the military buildup on the Spratly Islands.

Subi reef, located in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, is shown in this handout Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative satellite file image taken August 8, 2012, and released to Reuters October 27, 2015. REUTERS/CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe/Handout via Reuters/Files

The Chinese are also considering the construction of a network of ship and subsurface sensors that could block U.S. and Russian submarines.  It has been dubbed the “Underwater Great Wall Project”.

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