After exercising restraint in its nuclear weapons program for decades, China has made the poor choice of upgrading its arsenal in a way that raises concerns about its intentions, introduces new uncertainty in Asia and could add more fuel to a regional arms race.
The unsettling development is China’s decision to equip its most powerful missile — the DF-5 for Dong Feng or East Wind, which can reach the United States — with multiple warheads instead of just one. The information was reported publicly for the first time earlier this month in the annual Pentagon report on China’s military and security programs.
The United States pioneered this technology, called multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle, or MIRV, when it was in competition with the Soviet Union. MIRV made it possible to load each missile with as many as 10 warheads, each of which could be aimed at a different target. That made the missiles more lethal. But it also made a country with those missiles more vulnerable because an enemy would want to hit them before they could get off the ground. Because they put a premium on striking first, MIRVs were seen as inherently destabilizing and were limited in the SALT II treaty, the second major strategic arms limitation treaty signed in 1979.
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