China is hiding nuclear warheads inside a vast network of tunnels, according to a three-year investigation by a group of Georgetown University students.
The Asian Arms Control Project was led by Georgetown Professor Phillip A. Karber, a former top Pentagon strategist. The researchers say they identified locations of the tunnels by combing through hundreds of Chinese military journals and documents as well as studying TV reports and satellite images, according to the Washington Post, which broke the story Tuesday.
Their findings suggest the U.S. has greatly underestimated the size of China's weapons arsenal — but some experts have questioned the study’s methodology.
“It doesn’t make any sense to build ten miles of tunnels to hide one nuclear weapon,” Karber told the Daily News.
And ten miles is a drop in the bucket compared to what China has admitted.
In 2009, as the students were aggressively moving forward with their research, the Chinese military admitted to constructing 3,000 miles of tunnels.
The students’ yet-to-be-released 363-page report is causing a stir in Washington, and prompted a Congressional hearing.
The project has drawn criticism from some analysts for drawing on Chinese blogs and a docudrama about the Chinese military. A member of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Washington Post that the study’s methodology was “incompetent and lazy.”
"We’re not drawing conclusions from the blogs; they tip us off to areas for further research,” Karber told The News. “How can scientists make these claims when they haven’t even seen our sources?”
He added that the group studied about 200 hours of video, most of it from state-run television stations.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/georgetown-students-claim-china-hiding-massive-weapons-arsenal-underground-tunnels-article-1.985484#ixzz1fOFaTecH
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