U.S. MILITARY PREPARES TO CONFRONT CHINA'S SECRET 3000 WARHEAD UNDERGROUND ARESENAL

A US defense report has called for contingency planning to neutralize a vast Chinese tunnel network with both “conventional and nuclear forces.” James Corbett told RT the “Underground Great Wall” scare is being used to mask US nuclear ambitions.

Orders for the Commander of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to submit a report on means of nullifying China’s underground tunnel network were outlined in the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Barack Obama on January 2.

The NDAA-directed report will further seek to identify knowledge gaps regarding China’s nuclear weapons programs, a request which was likely spurred by a controversial 2011 study out of Georgetown University entitled “Strategic Implications of China’s Underground Great Wall.”

The researchers claimed that China’s Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the country’s military tasked with protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, had dug some 3,000 miles of tunnels which currently housed up to 3,000 nuclear warheads – ten times US intelligence estimates.

The report drew a firestorm of criticism via its unconventional Internet-based research methods, which relied on Google Earth, blogs, military journals and even a fictional television program about Chinese artillery soldiers, to reach its conclusions.

But the questionable conclusions of the Georgetown report and Washington’s drive to more properly assess China’s military capability, are more reflective of Washington’s own ‘nuclear strategy’ than Beijing’s ambitions, James Corbett, editor of the Japanese-based Corbett Report news website, argues.

RT: The U.S. government is operating on the assumption that there are three thousand kilometers worth of tunnels crisscrossing China. Is that something you'd find believable?

James Corbett: Well, I’m not even sure that the US government really believes it. This is really on the back of a study that was commissioned out of George Town University last year – or two years ago now – that found that in this network of tunnels that we do know exist and can see from satellite telemetry…and it’s just sheer speculation what exists within them at this point. US intelligence estimates puts the Chinese nuclear arsenal at 300 but this study out of George Town in 2011 estimated that it could house as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads. So basically as part of the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] 2013 they’re basically saying that now STRATCOM is going to have to issue a report to identify the potential problems involved in this and whether or not they’ll be able to confront this with conventional or nuclear forces in the event that they actually need to take action.

REST HERE: http://rt.com/news/usa-china-ndaa-tunnels-970/