In The News

Elizabeth Wishnick said, “The bottom line is that these countries may be distant from the Arctic region, but they still focus on it. The US, with its laser focus on strategic cooperation as we see in its Arctic Defense Strategy, misses some of this picture and could benefit from some new pathways to engaging with these Indo-Pacific states in the Arctic.”

Decker Eveleth joins Jeffrey to talk about why this is a fascinating change in behavior for the PLA Rocket Force and PRC in general. China has only ever done this twice before, both over 40 years ago, back in 1980. Decker and Jeffrey talk about the internally signaling mechanisms, the issues with corruption in the PLARF, China’s potential move to US and Russian style ICBM test notifications, strategic stability, and our favorite: absolutely gorgeous high-resolution photos of solid-fuel ICBMs.

Decker Eveleth explained, “Generally, the [People's Liberation Army Rocket Force] tests ICBMs from the interior of the country, out in the northern desert shooting east to werst. This is satisfactory for most system tests (many missile tests are actually conducted to test a specific subsystem). The problem is that this forces you to use a lofted trajectory.”

Decker Eveleth noted, “’The problem is that this forces you to use a lofted trajectory’ because the ‘distance from the ICBM test site to the target ranges is around 2000-3000 kilometers.’"