The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s new strategic nuclear submarine is capable of carrying a missile that can engage targets throughout the United States. This was reported on May 2 by the South China Morning Post, citing military sources.
We are talking about the project 094A Jin submarine, which was demonstrated on April 30 at the celebration of the 72nd anniversary of the formation of the PLA Navy.
The submarine is capable of carrying the latest solid-propellant intercontinental missiles JL-3, the flight range of which exceeds 10 thousand km and, according to some estimates, reaches 12 thousand km.
“The 094A submarine is a modernized version of the 094 type submarine, during its creation it was possible to solve one of the key problems related to noise, by improving the hydrokinetic and turbulent systems. This allowed her to carry more powerful JL-3 missiles, ”the newspaper quoted one of the interlocutors as saying.
The source noted that before the modernization, the submarine of this type was armed with a less powerful JL-2 missile, which was able to hit targets only in the northeastern part of the United States. Now its weapons are capable of covering the entire American continent.
According to experts, the JL-3 missile, like its predecessor, has the ability to carry multiple nuclear warheads.
The PLA Navy currently has six Project 094 submarines in various modifications and is going to build two more submarine missile carriers of this type to replace the outdated 092 class ships.
In October 2019, it was reported that a submarine was built in China without fencing retractable devices (cabin). Instead, it has a slight bulge of unknown purpose.