Satellite images which were first published in a detailed New York Times report indicates the possible reactivation of China’s Lop Nur nuclear test facility that is located in the remote Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the northwest part of the country. The images procured appear to indicate that China may soon be looking to conduct full-fledged nuclear tests or, possibly, subcritical nuclear explosions. Subcritical experiments are used to simulate nuclear explosions by making use of chemical explosives.
An effort by China to step up nuclear testing is indicative of Beijing’s interest in testing and qualifying some of its latest nuclear warhead designs that will fit on a host of new-generation ballistic and cruise missiles.
The analysis provided by The New York Times is built on the evidence provided by Dr Renny Babiarz who is a leading international geospatial intelligence expert and also a former Pentagon analyst that spent years studying satellite imagery of the Lop Nur facility where China conducted its first nuclear tests on October 16, 1964.
“The activity at Lop Nur is seen at one of the most sensitive moments in US-China relations,” says The New York Times. “President Biden has said that he’s making an effort to ‘stabilise’ the increasingly contentious relationship and, at a summit meeting last month with Xi Xinping, sought a measure of accord.”
On the contrary, China has dismissed the report citing that it was just clutching at shadows, groundlessly whipping up a ‘China nuclear threat’.
The images from Lop Nur over the last few years act as evidence to show a process of upgrading the facility.
Significantly, the images capture the construction of a new airbase in the area, the construction of multiple shafts into hill-features and, perhaps, the smoking gun – a large drilling rig measuring almost 90 feet tall
The images also show a mini-township that is believed to be a support facility for activities at Lop Nur. Within the township, known as Malan, is a rig that appears to be identical to the one at the Lop Nur site, which is located hundreds of kilometres away and functions as “a training site for shaft drillers.”
A key elite part of China’s military arsenal is the rocket force which controls Beijing’s nuclear triad of nuclear missiles launched from the air, sea and land. The operation of this is carried out under an integrated command and control system and is in the midst of a radical expansion.
A report coming in from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey says, “The current expansion of China’s missile forces is suggestive of a possible departure from China’s earlier restrained second-strike nuclear posture to a posture capable of deterring at multiple levels of conflict and an increased shift towards nuclear warfighting.”
The report also talks about China’s possession of around 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles, a little over a decade ago. For Bharat, which declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing after the 1998 tests in Pokhran, any Chinese effort at reactivating its Lop Nur range is bound to leave a profound impact on regional security.
Bharat, having a far more modest nuclear arsenal than China, conducted a series of five nuclear explosions in May 1998, the second of its tests after the first one in 1974. While these achieved their primary objective of giving Bharat the capability to build fission and thermonuclear devices, Bharat is now bound to rely on the computer simulations that predict the yields of any nuclear weapons that it designs.
Of all the nations known to have nuclear weapons, only Pakistan has conducted fewer nuclear weapons tests and detonated two nuclear devices in counter-tests following Bharat’s 1998 Pokhran explosions. As per the records of Army Control Association, the US has conducted 1,030 tests between 1945 and 2017, the USSR/Russia 715, France 210 while China and the UK have conducted 45 tests each.
