China Accelerates Next-Gen Nuclear Weapons Development To Compete With US, Russia

China Accelerates Next-Gen Nuclear Weapons Development To Compete With US, Russia

As we have been documenting over the last year and beyond, China is rapidly modernizing its military; unveiling a new stealth bomber, an array of guided-weapons, and deploying further from home. Their most recent focus has been on next generation nuclear weapons – as Beijing ramps up blast experiments for nukes comprised of smaller, smarter warheads designed to limit damage by targeting specific targets, according to the South China Morning Post. 

Between September 2014 and last December, China carried out around 200 laboratory experiments to simulate the extreme physics of a nuclear blast, the China Academy of Engineering Physics reported in a document released by the government earlier this year and reviewed by the South China Morning Post this month.

In comparison, the US carried out only 50 such tests between 2012 and 2017 – or about 10 a year – according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. –SCMP

China’s development of next gen nukes will put them in direct competition with the United States and Russia, sparking concerns by experts over the prospect of a new cold war arms race that has the potential of boiling over into thermonuclear war.

Of primary concern is the notion that nations possessing smaller, targeted nukes might be more inclined to use them vs. larger and more devastating munitions – which could easily lead down the slippery slope of larger nuclear exchanges.

These new weapons are considered more “usable” for tactical tasks such as destroying an underground bunker while generating little radioactive fallout.

Pentagon officials have said the US wants its enemies to believe it might actually use its new-generation weapons, such as smaller, smarter tactical warheads designed to limit damage by destroying only specific targets.

But with these relatively safer and less destructive weapons in hand, governments may end up losing the inhibition to use them. -SCMP

“The use of small warheads will lead to the use of bigger ones,” Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie told the Post. “If other countries use nuclear weapons on us, we have to retaliate. This is probably why there is research to develop new weapons.”

While an international ban prohibits China from testing actual nuclear weapons (a ban North Korea has laughed at for years), major nuclear powers continue to conduct testing via high-powered gas guns that fire high speed projectiles at weapons-grade laboratory materials.

The tests are conducted using a large, sophisticated facility known as a multi-stage gas gun, which simulates the extreme heat, pressure and shock waves produced in a real nuclear blast.

The experiments with the gas gun provide scientists with the data they need to develop more advanced nuclear weapons.

In the past, researchers used supercomputers to draw on historic data derived from live nuclear tests performed before the international ban was imposed in the 1990s.

But new technology that emerged in recent years, such as hypersonic vehicles and artificial intelligence, opened the door for the development of new nuclear weapons that could be smaller in size and more precise.

The gas gun works by using special explosives to force a piston along a hydrogen-filled metal tube. Once the hydrogen gas reaches a certain temperature and pressure, an “impactor” is released which travels at incredibly high speeds of at least 18,640 MPH towards a target.

Smaller than a saucer, the impactor is comprised of the same materials used in a nuclear warhead such as plutonium, metal, plastic or foam of different densities – resulting in a chemical reaction similar to that of a nuclear detonation. ….more here

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