Satellite images show Beijing building a sprawling web of launch pads, bunkers and communications nodes near the isolated nuclear silos that hold the Chinese military’s longest-range missiles. The construction, which reported from imagery reviewed by three security analysts, includes more than 80 launch pads and three octagon-shaped installations near the Hami nuclear silo field in China’s remote northwest.
The scale of the buildout has not been previously reported. The images show more than 80 pads that could be used by China’s expanding fleet of mobile missile launchers and air-defense batteries, spread across thousands of square kilometers of desert. Alexander Neill said the infrastructure is being built “on a grand scale,” and that it covers “thousands of square kilometers of desert beyond the silo fields.” He said it amounts to “a very considerable enhancement and diversification of China’s strategic nuclear deterrent.”
The network appears designed to protect and operate China’s land-based nuclear forces, with the silo fields in Xinjiang and neighboring Gansu province forming the core of that arsenal. China says it maintains a minimal but credible nuclear deterrent and its doctrine includes a no first use policy. But the buildout suggests Beijing is preparing to make any attempt at a U.S. first strike less certain, if not impossible, by ensuring enough of its force can survive to retaliate.
That comes as tensions with Washington remain raw. Xi Jinping warned U.S. President Donald Trump this month that mishandling disagreements over Taiwan could lead them to a “dangerous place.” China’s defense ministry did not respond to questions about the nuclear program or the developments visible in the satellite images, leaving the new construction to be read alongside a larger pattern of opacity that foreign diplomats and analysts have long criticized.
For now, the hard fact is that Beijing is expanding the physical footprint of its deterrent far beyond the silos themselves. The unknown is how quickly the network will be integrated into the missile force, and whether the scale of the work signals a shift from a posture built to survive to one built to absorb and answer a first blow.
