U.S. Navy Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, spoke at last year's Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. U.S. Navy / Capt. Ron Flanders
China Likely to Use ‘Nuclear Coercion’ in Bid to Take Taiwan by 2027, STRATCOM Chief Says
Adm. Richard urged Congress to restore funding for a ship-based nuclear missile.
China is closely watching the war in Ukraine and “will likely use nuclear coercion to their advantage in the future,” Adm. Charles Richard, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, told lawmakers on Wednesday. “Their intent is to achieve the military capability to reunify Taiwan by 2027.”
That timeline aligns with what then-INDOPACOM commander Adm. Philip Davidson told lawmakers in March 2021.
Richard urged lawmakers to restore funding for the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, a variable-yield weapon that the Pentagon was researching but omitted from its 2023 budget request. Military officials have argued that low-yield nukes are crucial to deterring Russia, which has some 2,000 of its own, while others say such weapons are destabilizing.
“China's nuclear trajectory, their strategic breakout, demonstrates that we have a deterrence and assurance gap against the threat of limited nuclear employment to help close this gap,” Richard told lawmakers on the Strategic Forces panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Because of that, he said, “pursuing a low-yield non-ballistic capability should be reconsidered.”