CHINA’S NUCLEAR FORCES: OPERATIONS, TRAINING, DOCTRINE, COMMAND, CONTROL, AND CAMPAIGN PLANNING

A decade ago, many scholars and policy analysts
who followed China dismissed the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) as an antiquated force that was essentially
infantry, fighting with decades-old weapons, poor
communications, and World War II era doctrine.
China’s nuclear forces were also technologically
outmoded and fixed to silo or tunnel launch sites. Very
little information was available about China’s “Second
Artillery Corps,” as China calls its strategic rocket
forces. The United States knew that the PLA maintained
a separate corps of rocket troops, but its doctrine and
command and control structures remained shrouded
in secrecy. Chinese diplomats, political leaders, and
security thinkers regularly announced that China
would adhere to a “no first use” policy, but very little
published military information was available about
how China intended to use its missile forces in crisis or
war.
Dr. Larry M. Wortzel’s monograph sheds new light
on the operations, training, and doctrine of the Second
Artillery Corps. The PLA is adding modernized mobile
missile forces to the older silo-based strategic forces. At
the same time, China is experimenting with multiple
reentry vehicles, maneuverable reentry vehicles,
and other penetration aids or countermeasures on
its warheads as measures to respond to potential
missile defenses. A nation-wide network of redundant
command and control systems is now deployed around
China to ensure retaliatory capabilities are available
and responsive to the orders of the Chinese Communist
Party’s Central Military Commission. The PLA has
generated new doctrine on how to integrate missile forces into its military campaigns at the operational
level of war while still maintaining the strategic nuclear
deterrent.
However, there are some worrisome aspects to this
modernization. China has mixed nuclear, nuclearcapable,
and conventionally armed missiles into its
theater (or campaign)-level forces. It has worked to
perfect ballistic missiles that can attack moving targets
at sea. Moreover, it has integrated submarine-launched
ballistic missiles into its nuclear doctrine. Among
civilian strategists and military officers, a debate has
developed about the viability of China’s “no-first-use”
pledges in the age of precision weapons and stealth
attack. Additionally, the PLA is now publishing more
military theoretical studies and doctrine on these
changes and how to employ them, providing new
information on China’s capabilities, organization, and
threat perceptions.
We are pleased to present this monograph, which
provides new insights into why China’s leaders and
military thinkers see the United States as a major
potential threat to the PLA and China’s interests. The
monograph also discusses the relationships between
conventional and nuclear ballistic units in war fighting
doctrine. These are critical matters for the Army and
our nation.