Chapter 4 Section 2 Chinas Pursuit of Advanced Weapons

SECTION 2: CHINA’S PURSUIT OF ADVANCED WEAPONS Key Findings • China is pursuing a range of advanced weapons with disruptive military potential. Six types that China’s leaders have priori- tized are maneuverable reentry vehicles, hypersonic weapons, directed energy weapons, electromagnetic railguns, counterspace weapons, and unmanned and artificial intelligence-equipped weapons. • China’s advanced weapons programs align with the People’s Liberation Army’s overall modernization drive over the past several decades, but appear to reflect a more careful degree of planning as to the U.S. weaknesses they are designed to exploit. • Current technological trends increase the difficulty of preserv- ing an advantage in developing advanced weapons. The United States for the first time faces a peer technological competitor—a country that is also one of its largest trading partners and that trades extensively with other high-tech powers—in an era in which private sector research and development with dual-use implications increasingly outpaces and contributes to military developments. • The requirements for developing advanced weapons are fun- damental scientific knowledge, unique materials, and abstract skill-based enablers (i.e., abilities, tools, and techniques). China has clear policies to exploit government funding, commercial technological exchange, foreign investment and acquisitions, and talent recruitment to bolster its dual-use technological ad- vances. For China, the only ultimate barrier to such advances is likely to be effort—time, will, and money—and it will be difficult for the United States and its allies and partners to deter this. • While China has only achieved incremental innovation in mil- itary technologies in the past, its research efforts at the tech- nological frontier indicate it may be moving from a phase of “catching-up” to pursuing “leap-ahead” technologies. China’s limited returns on science and technology investments indicate shortcomings that may render its development of innovative ad- vanced weapons more costly or protracted, but do not rule out successful innovation. • China’s achievement of a surprise breakthrough in one of these technologies is possible, due to the secrecy surrounding these programs and the uncertain nature of advanced weapons devel- opment in general. Such a breakthrough could have significant strategic implications for the United States, particularly in its (553)