Additionally, many of China’s suspected silo sites are located in desert areas with periodic sandstorms. Images © 2021 Planet Labs.Īpart from hiding silo details from satellites, these environmental shelters play an important role in the construction process: winter temperatures in areas like the Jilantai training area can reach below -25 degrees Celsius and pouring concrete in cold temperatures can cause it to freeze and crack. Suspected missile silos near Ordos at different stages of construction. Several months later, the shelter is removed, and construction continues in the open-air with less sensitive auxiliary structures. Several satellite images show semi-circle structural forms that may be lowered into the hole and assembled to form the silo walls during this phase. Occasionally the silo hole – or part of it – is excavated first and the shelter is erected over it before the silo components are installed. The construction progression typically goes like this: a space for each silo headworks is cleared, then the shelter is erected before large-scale excavation begins. Shelters are not new phenomena in Chinese missile construction declassified reports from the US National Photographic Interpretation Center suggest that in the 1970s and 1980s China used a mixture of “ large rectangular covers,” “ camouflage nets,” and other types of shelters to protect its silos from the elements, as well as from spy satellites above. It was these structures, first seen at Jilantai, that led to the discovery of the three large suspected missile silo fields. Some of the most visible features at each of China’s newly-discovered probable missile silo fields are the environmental shelters that cover each suspected silo headworks. We first describe the shelters, then what we see under the shelters, unique support facilities, and end with overall observations.
In this article we describe the progress we have observed. In recent analysis of new satellite images obtained from Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies, we have observed almost weekly progress in construction of suspected silos as well as discovered unique facilities that appear intended to support missile operations once the silo fields become operational. Yet our analysis of hundreds of satellite images over the past three years of the suspected missile silo fields and the different facilities that are under construction at each of them have increased our confidence that they are indeed related to the PLARF’s modernization program. In this article we use words like suspected, apparent, and probable to remind the reader of that fact. The Chinese government has still not officially confirmed or denied that the facilities under construction are silos intended for missiles and there are many uncertainties and unknowns about the nature and role of the facilities.
The images provide a vivid and rare public look into what is otherwise a top-secret and highly sensitive construction program.
After the discovery during the summer of what appears to be at least three vast missile silo fields under construction near Yumen, Hami, and Ordos in north-central China, new commercial satellite images show significant progress at the three sites as well as at the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF)’s training site near Jilantai. What’s underneath the shelters over China’s suspected silo construction sites? Image © 2021 Maxar Technologies
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