Pentagon sees no imminent threat to Taiwan from Chinese buildup

A new report from the Pentagon details China’s more provocative and aggressive actions toward Taiwan , but Defense Department officials say those actions do not mean an invasion will happen soon.

The annual China Military Power Report sent to Congress this week noted that the country’s military overhaul is continuing apace, including the modernization of its capabilities and the expansion of its nuclear arsenal. It comes amid heightened tension between China and Taiwan, and as President Joe Biden is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the coming months.

“I don’t see any kind of imminent indications of an invasion,” a senior defense official told reporters Monday. “We’re definitely very focused on this level of more intimidating and coercive behavior, and watching closely to see how things unfold.”

The report reiterates that China is the only country with the will and the military capacity, while still getting up to speed, to challenge what it describes as the U.S.-led “world order.”

The country has set 2049 as its goal for achieving a “world-class” military that could presumably rival U.S. capabilities, to be achieved through weapons modernization, expanded military basing and advanced warfare capabilities, to include information operations.

China is also getting into the multidomain game, according to the report, dubbing their “new core operational concept” with the eerily familiar “MultiDomain Precision Warfare.”

Like the U.S. doctrine, this approach involves advanced networking capabilities. Specifically, it “incorporates advances in big data and artificial intelligence to rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the U.S. operational system and then combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities,” the report reads.

Much of the focus on modernization is aimed at Taiwan.

Taiwan is squarely in China’s crosshairs, with an increase in 2021 of activity in the Taiwan strait, “to include increased flights into Taiwan’s self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and conducting island seizure exercises,” the report found.

China’s goal of modernization by 2027, to include “mechanization, informatization and intelligentization,” would make its military “more credible” in its efforts to bring Taiwan under its control.

Beyond Taiwan, China is also likely looking into developing more overseas bases, beyond its current hub in Djibouti.

“The PRC has likely considered Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan, among other places, as locations for PLA military logistics facilities,” according to the report.

Nuclear weapons and beyond

China is continuing its accelerated nuclear expansion and has an estimated stockpile of more than 400 nuclear warheads ― which still number fewer than America’s 3,750 nuclear weapons. At this pace, the third-largest nuclear armed power is likely to field a stockpile of 1,500 warheads by 2035, its target for “basically complete modernization” of its defense forces, the report said.

The country had kept its nuclear arsenal in the low hundreds for years, but last year’s report said it was on track to have at least 1,000 by 2030, essentially tripling its arsenal within a decade. It’s also building a land-sea-air triad of delivery vehicles similar to those of the U.S. and Russia ― including the H-6N air-to-air refuelable bomber, which it unveiled in 2019.

The U.S. acknowledged this month that China has fielding a new, intercontinental ballistic missile on six of its nuclear-powered submarines, meant to threaten the continental U.S. The senior defense official said Monday that China’s Jin-class submarines are on patrol with the JL-3 missiles, which let them hit the U.S. without traveling as far from protected Chinese coasts.

Pentagon officials said that the overall ramp-up, as Beijing resists U.S. efforts to draw it into arms control talks, suggests China may be moving away from its stated aim of having just enough nuclear weapons to maintain its national security.

“They’re going from what was often characterized as a minimum set of deterrence capabilities to one that’s much more sophisticated in scope and also larger in size. So they’re now kind of getting into the range of the middle nuclear powers here,” the official said.

The Biden administration is moving ahead with plans for a new bomber, the B-21 Raider, due to be unveiled next week.

It will be accompanied by the LGM-35A Sentinel, also known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which will replace Washington’s aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine is due to come online by the end of the 2020s.

The administration’s defense strategy, released in October, voices concern that the U.S. will, for the first time, face “two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries,” which will “create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction.”

Last year, China added three new ICBM silo fields for a total of at least 300 new silos, the new report said. China’s launch of roughly 135 ballistic missiles for testing and training last year, “was more than the rest of the world combined, excluding ballistic missile employment in conflict zones,” the report said.

The report also flags Beijing’s test of a new hypersonic weapon system in 2021, “building on previous progress in hypersonic weapon development.” Pentagon officials have acknowledged China’s test in July 2021 of a hypersonic glide vehicle and fractional orbital bombardment system ― which achieved the greatest distance flown, 40,000 kilometers, and longest flight time of any Chinese test.

As with last year’s report, the Pentagon acknowledged China’s fielding in 2020 of the DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile, equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade American missile defenses. Citing open source reporting, the report said the weapon appears designed to “strike foreign military bases and fleets in the Western Pacific.”

For military modernization and attaining more credible military tools to annex Taiwan, China has set 2027, 2035 and 2049 as its milestone years. To that end, its air force is rapidly catching up with the west, with more realistic training and exercises but also air-to-air missiles and other air defenses, the defense official said.

In a sign of China’s strides in domestic production, its J-10 and J-20 fighters are set to switch to Chinese-made WS-10 engines by the end of 2021. The report forecasts that China’s first domestically produced high-bypass turbofan, the WS-20, will “probably” replace Russian engines by the end of 2022 after entering flight tests for its heavy transport aircraft.

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.

五角大楼的一份新报告详细描述了中国对台湾采取的更具挑衅性和侵略性的行动，但国防部官员表示，这些行动并不意味着很快就会发生入侵。

本周提交给国会的年度《中国军事实力报告》指出，中国的军事改革正在加速推进，包括军事能力的现代化和核武库的扩充。这份报告发布之际，正值中台关系高度紧张之时，预计美国总统拜登将在未来几个月与中国国家主席习近平会晤。

一位高级国防官员周一告诉记者：“我没有看到任何即将发生入侵的迹象。我们目前非常关注这种更具恐吓和胁迫性的行为，并密切关注事态发展。”

报告重申，中国是唯一一个有意愿和军事能力挑战其所称的美国主导的“世界秩序”的国家，尽管中国仍在努力提升自身实力。

该国已将 2049 年设定为实现“世界一流”军队的目标，该军队有望与美国的实力相匹敌。实现这一目标将通过武器现代化、扩大军事基地和发展先进作战能力（包括信息作战）来实现。

报告称，中国也开始涉足多域作战，并将其“新核心作战概念”命名为似曾相识的“多域精确作战”。

与美国战略类似，这种方法也涉及先进的网络能力。报告指出，具体而言，它“融合了大数据和人工智能领域的最新进展，能够快速识别美国作战系统中的关键漏洞，然后跨领域联合作战力量，对这些漏洞发起精确打击”。

现代化进程中的许多重点都集中在台湾。

报告指出，台湾已完全处于中国的十字路口，2021 年台湾海峡的活动有所增加，“包括增加飞往台湾自行划定的防空识别区 (ADIZ) 的航班，以及进行岛屿夺取演习”。

中国的目标是到 2027 年实现现代化，包括“机械化、信息化和智能化”，这将使其军队在努力将台湾置于其控制之下时“更具可信度”。

除了台湾之外，中国可能还在考虑在吉布提以外的海外地区发展更多基地。

报告称，“中华人民共和国可能已经考虑过柬埔寨、缅甸、泰国、新加坡、印度尼西亚、巴基斯坦、斯里兰卡、阿拉伯联合酋长国、肯尼亚、赤道几内亚、塞舌尔、坦桑尼亚、安哥拉和塔吉克斯坦等地作为解放军军事后勤设施的选址。”

核武器及其他

报告指出，中国正持续加速推进核扩张，目前估计拥有超过400枚核弹头——但仍少于美国的3750枚核武器。按照目前的增长速度，到2035年，这个世界第三大核武国家很可能拥有1500枚核弹头，届时中国将实现国防力量“基本全面现代化”。

多年来，该国的核武库一直维持在数百枚左右，但去年的报告指出，到2030年，其核武库规模有望至少达到1000枚，这意味着十年内其核武库规模将增长近三倍。此外，该国还在构建类似于美国和俄罗斯的陆海空三位一体核打击力量，其中包括2019年发布的H-6N空中加油轰炸机。

美国本月承认，中国已在其六艘核动力潜艇上部署了一种新型洲际弹道导弹，旨在威胁美国本土。一位高级国防官员周一表示，中国的晋级潜艇正在携带巨浪-3型导弹巡逻，这使得它们能够在不远离中国受保护海岸线的情况下打击美国。

五角大楼官员表示，随着北京抵制美国将其纳入军控谈判的努力，整体上加大核武器研发力度，这表明中国可能正在偏离其既定目标，即只拥有足够数量的核武器来维护国家安全。

这位官员说：“他们正从过去通常被认为是最低限度的威慑能力，发展到范围更广、规模更大的威慑能力。所以，他们现在某种程度上已经达到了中等核大国的水平。”

拜登政府正在推进新型轰炸机B-21“突袭者”的研发计划，该机将于下周亮相。

它将与LGM-35A“哨兵”（Sentinel）导弹系统一同服役，该系统也被称为陆基战略威慑系统，将取代华盛顿老旧的“民兵III”型洲际弹道导弹。哥伦比亚级弹道导弹潜艇预计将于2020年代末期投入使用。

该政府于 10 月份发布的国防战略表示担忧，美国将首次面临“两个主要核大国作为战略竞争对手和潜在对手”，这将“给稳定带来新的压力，并对威慑、保证、军备控制和风险降低带来新的挑战”。

最新报告指出，去年中国新增了三个洲际弹道导弹发射井群，使其导弹发射井总数至少达到300个。报告还称，中国去年发射了约135枚弹道导弹用于测试和训练，“这一数字超过了世界其他国家的总和，还不包括在冲突地区使用的弹道导弹”。

该报告还指出，北京在2021年测试了一种新型高超音速武器系统，“这是在高超音速武器研发方面取得的先前进展的基础上进行的”。五角大楼官员已承认中国在2021年7月测试了一种高超音速滑翔飞行器和部分轨道轰炸系统——该测试飞行距离最远（4万公里），飞行时间最长，均为中国所有测试中的最高纪录。

与去年的报告一样，五角大楼承认中国在2020年部署了东风-17中程弹道导弹，该导弹配备了高超音速滑翔飞行器，旨在规避美国的导弹防御系统。报告援引公开来源的消息称，该武器似乎旨在“打击西太平洋的外国军事基地和舰队”。

为了实现军事现代化并获得更可靠的军事手段以吞并台湾，中国将2027年、2035年和2049年设定为关键节点。一位国防官员表示，为此，中国空军正在迅速赶上西方，不仅训练和演习更加贴近实战，而且还拥有空空导弹和其他防空装备。

中国国产化进程取得长足进步，其歼-10和歼-20战斗机计划在2021年底前换装国产WS-10发动机。报告预测，中国首款国产高涵道比涡扇发动机WS-20在完成重型运输机的飞行测试后，很可能在2022年底前取代俄罗斯发动机。

梅根·迈尔斯是《军事时报》五角大楼分社社长。她负责报道军事行动、政策、人事、领导力以及其他影响军人的问题。

乔·古尔德是《防务新闻》的资深五角大楼记者，负责报道国家安全政策、政治和国防工业的交汇点。他此前曾担任国会记者。