" F*ck the Washington Post"
armscontrolwonk.com
Edward Cody, the Washington Post’s Beijing correspondent, wrote an alarmist article about Beijing’s military modernization a week or so ago.
Cody’s piece of lazy, news analysis trash has a few paragraphs devoted to Beijing’s nuclear deterrent. Each and every one of the four sentences containing a factual statement is inaccurate in some way. That’s an amazing 100 percent “suck” factor:
Strategically, China’s military is also close to achieving an improved nuclear deterrent against the United States, according to foreign officials and specialists.
[1] The Type 094 nuclear missile submarine, launched last July to replace a trouble-prone Xia-class vessel, can carry 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles. [2] Married with the newly developed Julang-2 missile, which has a range of more than 5,000 miles and the ability to carry independently targeted warheads, the 094 will give China a survivable nuclear deterrent against the continental United States, according to “Modernizing China’s Military,” a study by David Shambaugh of George Washington University.
[3] In addition, the Dongfeng-31 solid-fuel mobile ballistic missile, a three-stage, land-based equivalent of the Julang-2, has been deployed in recent years to augment the approximately 20 Dongfeng-5 liquid-fuel missiles already in service, according to academic specialists citing U.S. intelligence reports.
[4] It will be joined in coming years by an 8,000-mile Dongfeng-41, these reports said, putting the entire United States within range of land-based Chinese ICBMs as well. “The main purpose of that is not to attack the United States,” Lin said. “The main purpose is to throw a monkey wrench into the decision-making process in Washington, to make the Americans think, and think again, about intervening in Taiwan, and by then the Chinese have moved in.”
Some of the mistakes are trivial (the ranges are slightly off, no one uses “DF-41” anymore), but others are serious inaccuracies about the deployment status of various Chinese missiles and their ability to carry multiple warheads.
To summarize:
[1] The Type 094 SSBN is probably not launched.
[2] The JL-2 cannot carry multiple RVs.
[3] The DF-31 is not deployed.
[4] The DF-5 has an 8,000 mile range; the DF-31A (DF-41) is expected to have a somewhat shorter range.
The Washington Post is refusing to run my response. Here it is (with the odd tweak or two):
Re: Edward Cody, “China Builds a Smaller, Stronger Military: Modernization Could Alter Regional Balance of Power, Raising Stakes for U.S.,” April 12, 2005, A01.
Mr. Cody repeats three assertions about Chinese nuclear forces that are clearly contradicted by the public assessments of the US intelligence community.
Mr. Cody states that “The Type 094 nuclear missile submarine, launched last July to replace a trouble-prone Xia-class vessel, can carry 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles.” Mr. Cody provides no source for the claim that the Type 094 submarine is deployed. The most recent unclassified intelligence assessments—Chinese Military Power (Department of Defense, June 2004), Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat (National Air and Space Intelligence Center, August 2003) and Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015 (National Intelligence Council, December 2001)—all describe the Type 094 as several years away from deployment. Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby testified in February before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that China “recently launched a new conventional submarine,” but did not indicate the Type 094 SSBN had been launched.
Mr. Cody asserts that the JL-2 will have “the ability to carry independently targeted warheads…” National Intelligence Officer Robert Walpole testified before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs in March 2002 that the intelligence community has concluded China’s nuclear weapons are too heavy to place more than a single warhead on the JL-2. General John Shalikashvili expressed the same judgment, on behalf of the intelligence community, in his report on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Mr. Cody also states that “the Dongfeng-31 solid-fuel mobile ballistic missile, a three-stage, land-based equivalent of the Julang-2, has been deployed in recent years…” Mr. Cody refers to “academic specialists citing U.S. intelligence reports.” Which specialists and which reports? The most recent editions of Chinese Military Power, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat and Foreign Missile Developments... all conclude that the DF-31 remains several years from deployment. Admiral Jacoby testified that China “continues to develop”—not deploy—the DF-31.
US intelligence estimates are not, of course, flawless. But they are the proper place to begin an analysis. The US intelligence community has unparalleled access to technical means of collection and employs well known methods that can be considered for gaps or bias. By contrast, citing an unspecified “expert” tells the reader little about the provenance of the information, unless the expert cites an intelligence report itself. In that case, reporters should refer to the primary source directly.
Jeffrey Lewis
The writer maintains www.armscontrolwonk.com which tracks nuclear weapons deployments and developments in the field of arms control.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists should have my article on the Chinese nuclear inventory on-line any day now.
I’ve noticed other things like this in the Post lately, including Walter Pincus’ descriptions of “an experimental XXS spacecraft whose ‘microsatellite payloads’ could attack enemy satellites” and the “Near Field Infrared Experiment that would use infrared technology to disable enemy satellite transmissions.”
The Post corrected only the latter error.
· Posted by Jeffrey Lewis · 17 April 05
Comment
1. Thanks and kudos! I too am sick and tired of the disgustingly pandering, extremely lazy, and unbelievably cowardly US press corps.
— Thomas Sazani Apr 17, 7:39pm #
2. Hey Jeff, it’s hard to do a comparison without your FAS article available. Any way you could point the rest of us at the open source materials you used in writing your piece so we can make up our minds?
thanks.
— ry Apr 18, 3:16am #
Link for that Washington post article
washingtonpost.com |
