FAS Researcher Discovers New Chinese Ballistic Missile Submarine

Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), spotted images of the new Chinese ballistic missile submarine, photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006, and made freely available on the Google Earth web site.

The commercial satellite image appears to have captured the new class, known as the Jin-class or Type 094, which is expected to replace the unsuccessful Xia-class (Type 092) of a single boat built in the early 1980s.

The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence estimated in December 2006 that China might build five Jin-class SSBNs. The estimate has been widely cited by non-governmental institutes and some news media as a fact, but the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military forces from May 2007 did not repeat the estimate.