US Strategic Command chief Charles Richard, who oversees the country’s nuclear weapons program, warned that China is developing nuclear weapons much faster than the US and called the issue a “short-term problem” during a briefing. speech at a closed event earlier this week.
While Pentagon officials have been sounding the alarm over China’s military buildup and development of nuclear weapons for years, Richard’s comments illustrate the situation as more dire than other officials have publicly declared.
“By assessing our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking,” said the admiral. “She’s sinking slowly, but she’s sinking, because fundamentally they’re putting capacity into the field faster than we are.”
Richard called the development of China’s nuclear weapons program a “short-term problem”.
“As these curves continue, no matter how good our [plano operacional] or how good our commanders are, or how good our forces are – we won’t have enough of them. And this is a very short-term problem.”
Richard made the remarks during a talk at the Naval Submarine League Annual Symposium last Wednesday. The event was closed to the public, but Richard’s comments were published in a Department of Defense article on Friday.
The Biden administration has consistently called China the US’s top global competitor, and has warned of the country’s development of its military and nuclear weapons program in a series of policy documents explaining US military and defense strategy released at the end of October.
China is the US “pace challenger” because it is “the only competitor with the intent and increasingly the ability to systematically challenge the United States in all respects, militarily, economically, technologically, diplomatically,” a senior official said. of defense over strategy. .
China “probably intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade,” said the Nuclear Posture Review, one of the policy documents, about China’s nuclear weapons program.
Richard warned of China’s nuclear development in 2021, calling its program a “strategic disruption”.
“We are witnessing a strategic escape from China. The explosive growth and modernization of its nuclear and conventional forces can only be what I describe as breathtaking, and frankly, that breathtaking word may not be enough,” Richard said in 2021.
Source: CNN Brasil
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