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By Ryan Chan
China News Reporter
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Researchers claimed on Wednesday that they have geolocated the launch site of a rare, publicized test of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in China.
On September 25, the Chinese military launched a DF-31AG ICBM carrying a dummy warhead to the high seas in the Pacific Ocean. The missile has a reported range of 6,959 miles, capable of striking most of the continental United States with a nuclear warhead.
China did not disclose the precise location of the launch site and the warhead's splash zone. Civil aviation notifications suggested that the missile was fired from the southern island of Hainan in China, while the warhead landed north of Tahiti in French Polynesia.
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China does not normally test-launch its ICBMs on the island, which faces the South China Sea, said Eliana Johns, senior research associate for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, who worked with open-source analyst Ise Midori to narrow down the potential launch location. No ICBMs are permanently deployed on the island.
Newsweek has contacted the Chinese Ministry of National Defense for comment by email. The launch was not directed against any country or target, the ministry said previously, and "tested weaponry performance and military training effectiveness and achieved desired goals".
Based on available information, including a photo of the launch released by the Chinese military as well as a social media photo showing the road-mobile launcher on the island, it was determined that the missile was likely fired from Wenchang in the northeast of Hainan.
The DF-31AG is a longer-range version of the DF-31, China's first solid-fuel road-mobile ICBM. China "probably completed" the construction of 300 solid-fuel ICBM silos, capable of fielding both DF-31 and DF-41 class ICBMs, the U.S. military said in a report last year.
The road-mobile missile was likely transported by rail to a port before being loaded onto a ship to reach the island from the mainland. There is a cross-sea railway connecting Hainan and Guangdong, a coastal province situated on the north shore of the South China Sea.
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The September 25 launch was the first such ICBM test for China since the 1980s. Beijing normally test-launches its nuclear missiles in a very high apogee within its territory, Johns said. Apogee is the maximum height of the ballistic missile's flight above the Earth.
It was not immediately clear whether the Chinese military will launch more ICBMs from Hainan for testing in the future. But that location allows it to test the missile at full range without dropping missile stages on the ground or overflying other countries, Johns added.
The U.S.has tested its nuclear weapons over the Pacific Ocean as well, where the ICBM, carrying an unarmed warhead would travel 4,200 miles from California to a test site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which is in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
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