May 14, 1999
China Is Installing a Warhead Said to Be
Based on U.S. Secrets
By JAMES RISEN and JEFF GERTH
The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- China is close to deploying a nuclear missile with a
warhead whose design draws on stolen American secrets, United States
intelligence officials say.
A long-range Chinese missile, known as the Dong Feng-31, is being
equipped with a small nuclear warhead whose design uses secret American
technology, according to American intelligence assessments. The
technology is believed to have been stolen from a Government weapons
laboratory, although there is some debate over precisely what technical
information officials believe is being used.
According to the assessments, the missile is expected to be deployed
within three or four years, giving China what officials believe would be its
first warhead designed using secret American technology.
Since suspicions of Chinese nuclear espionage became public, the Clinton
Administration has said that there is no evidence that Beijing has actually
deployed nuclear weapons that rely on stolen American secrets.
Thursday night, the White House declined to comment on the assessments
of China's nuclear intentions.
Officials have said, for example, that China stole design information about
America's most advanced warhead, the W-88, between 1984 to 1988. Yet
they stress that while China has developed a test version with a similar
design, it has not actually produced such a weapon.
American officials believe that the technology suspected of having been
stolen for use in the DF-31's warhead will help China achieve its goal of
building a modern nuclear arsenal that relies on mobility to evade attacks.
The DF-31 will be a truck-based mobile missile that can be moved, thus
making it more difficult to detect and destroy.
China has denied allegations that it stole United States secrets, and insists
that its weapons are based on its own research and development.
China's nuclear arsenal is still much smaller and less technically advanced
than that of the United States. Yet the DF-31 and its new warhead
represent a step forward in China's efforts to present a more formidable
nuclear presence.
Officials say that also means China may soon be using secrets stolen from
the United States on weapons capable of a significant range that could
include Europe, Asia and possibly the western United States.
American intelligence assessments say the DF-31 will have a range of
approximately 5,000 miles. It is expected to be ready for deployment as
early as 2002 or 2003.
"The DF-31 ICBM will give China a major strike capability that will be
difficult to counterattack at any stage of its operation," a 1996 Air Force
intelligence report on the DF-31 stated. "It will be a significant threat not
only to U.S. forces deployed in the Pacific theater, but to portions of the
continental United States and to many of our allies."
Some United States officials say the new Chinese weapon will use design
technology from the American W-70 warhead, a small bomb designed at
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in the 1970's.
China stole secret design information about the W-70 from the lab in the
late 1970's or early 1980's, Government investigators believe. A scientist
was fired from Lawrence Livermore in 1981 in connection with the
investigation into the suspected theft, but no one has ever been arrested in
the case. The F.B.I. said it did not have evidence to bring charges in the
case.
The scientist involved in the suspected espionage has never been publicly
identified.
Some American officials believe that China used design information from
the "primary" of the W-70 to help develop the advanced warhead that will
be used on the DF-31 missile. The "primary" of a modern nuclear weapon
is a small atomic bomb that serves to ignite the "secondary," a larger
hydrogen bomb.
The W-70 warhead is also known as the neutron bomb, a weapon that kills
people with enhanced radiation while leaving buildings intact. But its
"primary" can be used in other nuclear weapons as well.
American officials have based their belief of Chinese reliance on American
design secrets for the new warhead in part on analyses of Chinese nuclear
tests in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Officials believe that those
successful tests were of a small warhead that is scheduled for use on the
DF-31.
Intelligence officials have also based their assessments on analyses of the
range and payload abilities of the DF-31.
Because the analyses are based partly on inferences, there is still a debate
under way within the American intelligence community over which
American nuclear secrets the Chinese are using. There is also disagreement
over the extent to which the DF-31's warhead will rely on American
technology, officials said.
"There is a debate over how much design information of ours they are
using," one official said. "This is a very sophisticated piece of equipment
that was difficult for us to develop, so we think it would be hard for them
to develop."
Despite the debate, the broad conclusion that the DF-31 will come
equipped with a warhead that uses stolen American technology is included
in two new secret Government reports, officials said.
Part of one report from a select House committee is soon to be made
public. The other report is the result of a Government-wide intelligence
assessment of the damage done to United States national security by
Chinese nuclear espionage, according to officials. That Government-wide
assessment, however, acknowledges the uncertainty.
An unclassified summary of the Government-wide intelligence assessment
released last month stated that "it is more likely that the Chinese used U.S.
design information to inform their own program than to replicate U.S.
weapons designs," in other words, used information to develop their own
projects rather than to merely copy American weapons.
The Congressional report does not name the specific warhead design
thought to have been stolen by China.
Some officials say that it was not until the Government-wide assessment
that many intelligence analysts began to draw connections between the
suspected theft of design secrets with the evidence gathered on the DF-31
and the continuing modernization of China's nuclear arsenal.
The DF-31, a solid-fuel missile, would be the first Chinese inter-continental
ballistic missile that would be moved on roads. China test-fired its rocket
motor last July, and the missile was scheduled to be flight-tested last
December, The Washington Times has reported.
Once the DF-31 and other advanced missiles are deployed, China is
expected to begin to phase out its older and less accurate ballistic missiles.
"The DF-31 ICBM will give China a major strike capability that will be
difficult to counterattack at any stage of its operation, from preflight
mobile operations through the terminal flight phase," the 1996 Air Force
intelligence report predicted.
The "road mobility" of the DF-31, the report adds, "will greatly improve
Chinese nuclear ballistic missile survivability and will complicate the task of
defeating the Chinese threat."
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