Survivability of China's Sea-Based Nuclear Forces

A good agenda item for a US-China strategic dialogue is offered by Wu Riqiang in his article assessing the survivability of China’s ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) in coastal waters against U.S. anti-submarine warfare and the vulnerability of their ballistic missiles to interception by planned U.S. sea-based missile defenses. He shows why China may be concerned about the possible noisiness of its new Type 094 submarine and may need to improve the quietness of the planned fleet of perhaps six SSBNs to ensure their survivability. Further, he finds that U.S. plans to develop missile interceptors much faster than those available today and deploy them by 2018 on Aegis destroyers close to Chinese SSBN coastal patrol areas could enable the United States to intercept most if not all the SLBMs launched from China’s coastal waters towards the U.S. mainland. To counter these perceived vulnerabilities, China could seek to move its submarines from coastal waters to patrol areas in the deep oceans and closer to the United States and to longer range sea-launched ballistic missiles and add more and better decoys to assure some of its nuclear warheads will reach the United States.