EXPOSED: 80 Launch Pads in the Xinjiang Desert — Inside the Largest Nuclear Buildup Beijing Has Ever Tried to Hide

Satellite eyes don’t lie. And what they just caught Xi Jinping doing should alarm every capital from Washington to Tokyo.

In the parched emptiness of eastern Xinjiang, where Beijing once told the world it was building “wind farms” and “training ranges,” a vast nuclear war machine is now plainly visible from space. A Reuters investigation published on May 29 — drawing on commercial satellite imagery assessed by three independent security analysts — has revealed more than 80 launch pads, hardened bunkers and communications nodes sprawling across the desert near the Hami intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields.  This is not modernization. This is a sprint toward strategic parity — and possibly beyond — with the United States.

At the heart of the complex sit two octagon-shaped installations constructed over the past six years, roughly 140 kilometers and 230 kilometers southwest of the Hami silo fields.  Satellite imagery shows the octagons house personnel and large military vehicles, flanked by armored bunkers, fortified weapons-storage areas, airfields and railheads linking them directly to the silos.  Around the northern octagon, exercises involving heavy military vehicles were observed in April and again this May.  Camouflaged launch sites have been cut into the desert floor, several shielded by air-defense batteries.