People's Liberation Army Rocket Force
Based on Wikipedia: People's Liberation Army Rocket Force
In July 2021, China tested something that stunned Pentagon officials: a hypersonic missile that circled the entire globe before releasing a second projectile—while traveling at five times the speed of sound. Neither the United States nor Russia had demonstrated anything like it. The weapon combined two fearsome technologies, a fractional orbital bombardment system and a hypersonic glide vehicle, into a single delivery mechanism that could strike anywhere on Earth while evading every missile defense system in existence.
This test came from the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, China's strategic missile branch and the custodian of the world's largest land-based missile arsenal. Most countries with nuclear weapons keep them under air force or navy control. China took a different path, creating an entirely separate military branch devoted exclusively to missiles—a decision that reveals something fundamental about how Beijing thinks about deterrence, control, and the terrifying logic of nuclear war.
Born from Soviet Betrayal
China's nuclear program began in the late 1950s with substantial help from the Soviet Union. The two communist powers were allies, and Moscow provided technical assistance, plans, and advisors to help Beijing develop atomic weapons.
Then came the Sino-Soviet split.
As ideological and territorial disputes fractured the relationship, the Soviets began withdrawing their support. They withheld the plans for an atomic bomb. They abrogated the agreement on nuclear technology transfer. By 1960, Soviet advisors were packing their bags and heading home, taking their expertise with them.
Chinese leaders could have abandoned the program. Instead, they committed even more forcefully to nuclear development. The goal was explicit: break the superpowers' monopoly on nuclear weapons. China would not be dependent on Soviet protection, nor would it remain vulnerable to American or Soviet nuclear threats. And possession of these ultimate weapons would elevate Chinese prestige on the world stage.
The pace of progress that followed was extraordinary. In just thirty-two months, China achieved three nuclear milestones that had taken other powers far longer. On October 16, 1964, at the Lop Nor test site in the remote Xinjiang desert, China detonated its first atomic bomb. On October 27, 1966, it launched its first nuclear-armed missile. And on June 17, 1967, it detonated a hydrogen bomb—a thermonuclear weapon hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This was no accident of genius. It was a deliberate national mobilization, protected even from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution that was tearing apart China's universities and scientific institutions during those same years.
The Second Artillery Corps
To operate this growing arsenal, China established a unique organizational structure. On July 1, 1966, the People's Liberation Army created what it called the Second Artillery Corps—a deliberately vague name chosen to obscure the unit's true purpose.
The following year, the Central Military Commission (the Communist Party body that controls all Chinese armed forces) issued regulations establishing something unusual in military organizations: a direct command line running from the top political leadership straight to the nuclear missile units, bypassing normal military chains of command. Force development, deployments, maneuvers, and especially combat operations would all require explicit orders from the Central Military Commission itself.
This wasn't bureaucratic paranoia. It reflected a genuine understanding of what nuclear weapons are: political instruments of the highest order, too consequential to be left to military judgment alone. Every nuclear-armed nation grapples with this tension between military flexibility and political control. China resolved it by keeping nuclear weapons under the tightest possible civilian oversight.
For nearly twenty years, this force remained a state secret. The Second Artillery made its first public appearance on October 1, 1984, during a parade celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of the People's Republic.
From Minimum Deterrence to Something Larger
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, China developed an increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal. The Dongfeng series of missiles—Dongfeng means "East Wind" in Mandarin—grew to include medium-range, intermediate-range, and eventually intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the Soviet Union and the western United States.
In May 1980, China conducted a successful test of its full-range intercontinental ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-5. The missile flew from central China to the Western Pacific, where a naval task force recovered it. China had demonstrated the ability to strike targets on the other side of the world.
A year later, China launched three satellites from a single rocket—a technical demonstration suggesting it might possess the technology for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. These are missiles that carry several warheads, each aimed at a different target, exponentially increasing the destructive potential of a single launch.
China also launched its first ballistic missile submarine in 1981, giving it a sea-based nuclear force that would be nearly impossible to destroy in a first strike. By 1986, China possessed what strategists call a nuclear triad: weapons that could be delivered by land-based missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and bomber aircraft.
The doctrine governing these forces was, and remains, distinctive. China pledged to never use nuclear weapons first. This "no first use" policy meant nuclear weapons were purely retaliatory—they existed to ensure that any nuclear attack on China would result in devastating counter-attack. Chinese strategists called this combination of principles "close defense" (ensuring the nuclear force could survive an enemy strike) and "key point counterstrikes" (having the ability to retaliate effectively).
The force was meant to be, in the words of Deng Xiaoping, "lean and effective." China didn't need nuclear parity with the superpowers. It just needed enough weapons, survivable enough, to guarantee that any attacker would suffer unacceptable consequences.
The Embassy Bombing and Its Aftermath
In 1999, during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, American aircraft struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists. Washington claimed it was a tragic accident caused by outdated maps. Beijing didn't believe it.
Chinese leadership drew an alarming conclusion: China lacked the conventional military leverage to deter or respond to American aggression. The episode accelerated efforts that were already underway to develop precision conventional missiles and expand the missile force beyond its purely nuclear role.
This shift transformed the Second Artillery. Where it had once been exclusively a nuclear force, it now became a dual-use service operating both nuclear and conventional missiles. The conventional arsenal grew to include short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and eventually anti-ship ballistic missiles—weapons that could threaten American aircraft carriers operating near Chinese waters.
Becoming the Rocket Force
On January 1, 2016, as part of sweeping military reforms, China renamed the Second Artillery Corps the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force and elevated it to full branch status, equal to the army, navy, and air force. The name change ended decades of deliberate obscurity. There was no longer any pretense that this was anything other than a strategic missile force.
Today, the Rocket Force comprises more than 120,000 personnel organized into six operational "bases"—essentially corps-level units deployed across China's military theater commands—plus three support bases handling storage, engineering, and training. Each operational base controls multiple brigades equipped with different missile types depending on their geographic location and mission.
The scale of the arsenal is immense. According to Pentagon estimates, China possesses around 400 ground-launched cruise missiles, 900 short-range ballistic missiles, 1,300 medium-range ballistic missiles, 500 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles. This makes it the largest land-based missile force on Earth.
Many of these missiles are extraordinarily accurate—precise enough to destroy targets without nuclear warheads. This represents a revolution in conventional warfare. A missile that can land within meters of its target can destroy a command bunker, a runway, or a warship without creating nuclear fallout or crossing the nuclear threshold.
The Underground Great Wall
Survivability has always been central to China's nuclear strategy. A retaliatory force is useless if it can be destroyed before it can launch. China addressed this challenge in characteristic fashion: by digging.
In late 2009, reports emerged that the Rocket Force was constructing a vast underground tunnel network in the Taihang Mountains of Hebei province. Estimates suggested the tunnels could stretch three thousand to five thousand kilometers—roughly two thousand to three thousand miles. This "Underground Great Wall" would house mobile missile launchers, allowing them to move unpredictably beneath hardened rock while remaining protected from surveillance and attack.
The project built on China's long experience with tunnel warfare, dating back to conflicts with Japan and the Korean War. But the scale was unprecedented. The goal was to make China's nuclear retaliatory capability essentially invulnerable. Even if an adversary achieved the impossible and destroyed every known missile site, weapons hidden in thousands of miles of tunnels would survive to strike back.
The Hypersonic Era
The most dramatic recent development has been China's pursuit of hypersonic weapons—missiles that travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound, or roughly 3,800 miles per hour) while maneuvering in ways that make them nearly impossible to intercept.
Traditional intercontinental ballistic missiles follow predictable arcs through space. They're fast, but their trajectories can be tracked and, theoretically, intercepted. Hypersonic glide vehicles work differently. After being boosted to high altitude and extreme speed, they glide through the upper atmosphere while maneuvering unpredictably. Their combination of speed, maneuverability, and low-altitude flight defeats existing missile defense systems.
China's DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle first flew on January 9, 2014, and likely entered service by October 2019. It reportedly travels at Mach 10—twelve thousand kilometers per hour, or about seven thousand miles per hour.
But it was the July 2021 test that captured global attention. The weapon system demonstrated fractional orbital bombardment capability, meaning it could enter a low Earth orbit, circle the globe, and descend on its target from unexpected directions—potentially approaching the United States from over the South Pole rather than the expected northern trajectory, evading radar and missile defense systems oriented toward the Arctic.
What made the test truly unprecedented was the secondary missile launch. While traveling at hypersonic speeds, the vehicle released a separate projectile. No other nation had demonstrated this capability. The Pentagon, according to reports, was caught off guard by how advanced China's hypersonic program had become.
The Silo Expansion
In June 2021, researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies made a startling discovery using commercial satellite imagery. Near Yumen City in Gansu province, construction was underway on what appeared to be 119 new missile silos designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
A month later, the Federation of American Scientists identified another construction site: 110 additional silos being built near Hami in Xinjiang. Together, these projects represented more than ten times the number of ICBM silos the Rocket Force currently operated.
The expansion marked a potential departure from China's traditional "lean and effective" approach. Some analysts suggested China might be building empty silos as decoys, forcing adversaries to waste missiles targeting holes in the ground. Others argued China was genuinely expanding its nuclear force in response to advances in American missile defense and the deterioration of U.S.-China relations.
By 2023, estimates of China's nuclear warhead stockpile had risen to approximately 500-600 weapons. The Pentagon projected China would possess around 1,000 warheads by 2030. While still far smaller than American or Russian arsenals (which number in the thousands), this represented a significant departure from decades of relative restraint.
The Corruption Purge
In July 2023, something unusual happened at the highest levels of the Rocket Force. Commander Li Yuchao and Deputy Commander Liu Guangbin were placed under investigation by the Central Military Commission's discipline inspection body—essentially the party's internal anti-corruption watchdog for the military.
Within weeks, both were removed from their posts. Their replacements raised eyebrows: Wang Houbin, the new commander, came from the navy rather than the Rocket Force itself. This was highly irregular. Normally, commanders rise through their own service branches.
The official reasons for the purge were never stated. Rumors suggested corruption, or potentially something more serious—the disclosure of military secrets. Whatever the cause, the personnel upheaval raised questions about the integrity of China's most sensitive military branch at a time of heightened tensions over Taiwan.
For a force built on the principle of absolute party control over nuclear weapons, even the appearance of compromised leadership was deeply troubling.
The Pacific Test
On September 25, 2024, at 00:44 Coordinated Universal Time, the Rocket Force conducted its first intercontinental ballistic missile test over the Pacific Ocean in more than four decades. The specific missile type was not disclosed.
The last such test had occurred in the early 1980s, when China demonstrated the Dongfeng-5's ability to reach the Western Pacific. In the intervening decades, China had tested ICBMs only within its own territory, launching from one part of the country to impact zones in another. An over-ocean test sends a different signal—it demonstrates not just capability but willingness to project that capability across international waters.
The Logic of Deterrence
China's nuclear strategy rests on a paradox familiar to all nuclear powers: the weapons exist to never be used. Their entire value lies in their potential for retaliation. A nuclear attack on China would be suicidal because China would respond with devastating force.
This logic requires that China's nuclear weapons be survivable. It doesn't matter how many weapons you have if they can all be destroyed before you can use them. Hence the tunnels, the mobile launchers, the submarines, and the geographic dispersal of forces across a vast country.
It also requires that China's weapons be effective. They don't need to match American or Russian arsenals warhead for warhead. They just need to guarantee unacceptable damage in response to any attack. A few hundred nuclear weapons detonated on major cities would be catastrophic beyond calculation, regardless of how many weapons the attacker retained.
China has historically targeted countervalue rather than counterforce objectives. In nuclear strategy, counterforce targeting aims at enemy military assets—missile silos, command centers, military bases. Countervalue targeting aims at population centers and economic infrastructure—cities. China's smaller arsenal made counterforce targeting impractical; even if Chinese missiles were accurate enough, there simply weren't enough of them to eliminate hardened military targets across the vast American or Russian landscapes.
So China maintained the threat of devastating urban destruction instead. It's a grimmer form of deterrence, explicitly holding populations hostage to ensure national survival. But it requires fewer weapons and is harder to defend against.
Conventional Precision and Regional Power
The growth of China's conventional missile force has perhaps been even more strategically significant than its nuclear expansion. Thousands of highly accurate conventional missiles give China options short of nuclear war.
Taiwan sits within range of medium-range ballistic missiles that could saturate the island's military bases, radar installations, and command centers within minutes of a conflict's start. American bases in Japan, South Korea, and Guam are similarly vulnerable. Anti-ship ballistic missiles—a capability China pioneered—could threaten aircraft carriers that have long been the foundation of American power projection in the Pacific.
These weapons enable what strategists call anti-access/area denial. China doesn't need to match the American navy ship for ship if it can threaten those ships with land-based missiles. The cost of operating near Chinese waters becomes prohibitive even without China building a comparable fleet.
This represents a fundamental shift in the military balance of the Western Pacific. For decades after World War II, the United States enjoyed essentially unchallenged power projection capability across the region. China's missile force has eroded that advantage in ways that are still being calculated.
The Command Question
One puzzle remains at the heart of the Rocket Force's organization: the relationship between nuclear and conventional operations. Nuclear weapons remain under the tightest party control, with the Central Military Commission maintaining direct authority in peacetime and especially in wartime. But what about the thousands of conventional missiles?
Evidence from 2022 suggested ongoing integration between the Rocket Force and China's regional theater commands for conventional operations. This makes sense—conventional missiles are tactical and operational weapons that would need to be coordinated with army, navy, and air force operations in any conflict. But the blur between nuclear and conventional chains of command creates risks.
An adversary who sees missile launches from a Rocket Force base cannot immediately know whether those missiles carry conventional or nuclear warheads. In the fog of war, this ambiguity could lead to catastrophic miscalculation.
China has maintained strict physical separation between nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles, with warheads stored separately under specialized base units. This adds a layer of safety—you can't accidentally launch a nuclear weapon if the warhead isn't attached—but potentially slows response time in a crisis.
The organizational choices reflect tensions inherent in managing dual-use forces: speed versus safety, military flexibility versus political control, conventional effectiveness versus nuclear stability. No solution is perfect. Every choice involves tradeoffs that could prove critical in a crisis no one wants and everyone must prepare for.
What Comes Next
The Rocket Force continues to evolve. New missile types enter service regularly. Construction continues on silo fields and underground facilities. Hypersonic technology advances. The nuclear stockpile grows, though it remains smaller than those of Russia or the United States.
Much remains unknown. The full extent of the tunnel network is classified. The precise capabilities of hypersonic weapons are closely guarded secrets. The integration of conventional and nuclear operations is debated even among specialists. And the internal politics of the Rocket Force, laid bare by the 2023 purge, remain opaque.
What is clear is that China has built a missile force of extraordinary size and sophistication. It is the custodian of the world's largest land-based missile arsenal, a growing nuclear capability, and cutting-edge hypersonic technology. It operates under the tightest political control of any Chinese military branch, with a direct command line running to the Communist Party's highest leadership.
The name has changed, from the deliberately obscure "Second Artillery Corps" to the explicit "Rocket Force." The mission has expanded from purely nuclear deterrence to include conventional precision strike across the Western Pacific. But the fundamental logic remains: these weapons exist to ensure that any attack on China would be met with overwhelming response. Their value lies not in their use, but in the certainty that they could be used.
That certainty—maintained through survivability, capability, and credible command—is what makes deterrence work. It is also what makes it terrifying.