You remember those funny political cartoons showing a bunch of Korean soldiers carrying a nuclear weapon on their shoulders and trying to throw it at America?  The joke was that it really doesn’t matter of Korea has the bomb because they don’t the ability to deliver the payload to United States soil. Well, not so with China.   The People’s Republic recently tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that has the range to reach any city in the United States.  The Washington Free Beacon, recently reported that China successfully completed a flight test for the DF-41, a long-range missile powerful enough to carry a bomb to America.

China rolled out it’s DF-31 mobile ICBM launchers in 2007, and the DF-41 improves upon those launch capabilities with greater range and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles 

The Free Beacon quoted unnamed officials who verified the test took place, but could not verify some of the flight test details, such as how many dummy warheads were used.

According to Jane’s Defense, the DF-41 has a range of just under 7,500 miles, “putting the entire US at risk.” The site notes a report by the US China Economic and Security Review Commission (part of an annual effort mandated by the U.S. Congress) that claims that each of the new Chinese ICBMs can carry 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. The USCC report went on to say that this weapon could “[overwhelm] US ballistic missile defenses.”

The DF-41′s capacity to carry ten warheads was also verified by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (the primary missile spy identification center for the U.S. intelligence community), according to the Washington Free Beacon.  Many verifiable sources maintain that China has amassed a formidable nuclear arsenal including 240 large warheads that could be used for either direct damage or be exploded miles above a target country to cause a crippling electromagnetic pulse blast — a maneuver that could knock out all power in the United States for months or years.

By comparison, the U.S. strategic warhead arsenal has 1,642 nuclear warheads, but all Minuteman missiles have been modified so they cannot carry MIRVs — the multiple reentry vehicles. However, the Navy’s Trident II submarine-launched missiles can still delivery 14 warheads per launch.

In the 1990s China illegally obtained the multiple-warhead technology from the United States and they have steadily developing the capabilities to deploy several nuclear warheads at once, but the successful test of the DF-41 signals a significant step forward for China’s strategic nuclear forces.

Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy said recently that this threat, especially the considerations for a massive, country-wide blackout that could kill as many as 90% of Americans, “should be considered significant, and cannot be ignored. “China has the doctrine, the appreciation of our vulnerabilities and increasingly the means to conduct electromagnetic pulse attacks against the United States,” he said. “As it improves the range and lethality of its ballistic missile forces, that threat will only grow. We ignore it, and continue to leave ourselves vulnerable to such a nation-ending danger, at our extreme peril.”

The USCC report says, “It is clear … China’s nuclear forces over the next three to five years will expand considerably and become more lethal and survivable with the fielding of additional road-mobile nuclear missiles … (and) China in 2014 continued to pursue a broad counter-space program to challenge US information superiority in a conflict and disrupt or destroy US satellites if necessary.”

The DF-41 in transport mode

The executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, Peter Pry, said that Chinese military doctrine would certainly allow the use of electromagnetic pulse attacks.  “In addition to planning for a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. homeland, China in military doctrine and exercises is preparing to make an EMP attack against U.S. aircraft carrier groups coming to the rescue of Taiwan,” Pry said.

“ICBMs can reach U.S. carriers long before they can enter the theater of operations and become a military factor. Moreover, the execution of a nuclear EMP attack against a U.S. carrier group, China calculates, might well deter the United States from rescuing Taiwan,” he noted. “As General Xiong Guangkai threatened, on the eve of the 1996 crisis over Taiwan, ‘the U.S. cares more about Los Angeles than it does about Taiwan.’”

James Riordan .is the author of thirty-three books, including “The Coming of the Walrus”, “The Bishop of Rwanda” and “Break on Through : The Life & Death of Jim Morrison” which was made into the movie, The Doors by Oliver Stone.  Riordan also wrote Stone’s biography..  He has won nine national awards and was nominated for a Chicago Area Emmy for television writing.  He has also written several screenplays and is widely recognized for his ministry work with teenagers.