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On January 1, 2016, the People's Republic of China renamed its Second Artillery Corps as the Rocket Force. A year later, Chinese state television has a retrospective of the PLARF in 2016. Hint: It contains a lot of rocket launches.

China has a large number of long-range military rockets. Many of them are conventionally armed and act as substitutes for long-range bombers, cruise missile, and other strike assets. The Rocket Forces control both China's land-based nuclear missiles and conventional missiles. Many of the missiles are dual-capable, meaning they can be armed with nuclear or conventional weapons.

The video opens with a convoy of PLARF trucks on a dusty road, and a DF-21 missile being hoisted high into the air on its transporter/erector/launcher (TEL)—basically a ten-wheeled military truck designed to safely haul the missile around and launch it. The DF-21 (DF stands for Dong Feng or "East Wind") medium-range missile has a range of 1,000 miles and can pack either a high-explosive warhead or a 200 to 300-kiloton nuclear warhead. The DF-21 can hit targets as far away as Japan or deep inside inside India. A special version of the DF-21, the DF-21D , has been developed to attack American aircraft carriers at sea.

Next, at the 0:50 mark five DF-15A missiles rise out of the backs of their TEL trucks. A short-range ballistic missile, the DF-15A has a range of just 560 miles. Older versions are accurate to within 900 feet half of the time, while newer versions use BeiDou , China's version of the American Global Positioning System, to bring accuracy down to 30 feet. Shorter range missiles such as these would be useful against targets in border regions of India and the island of Taiwan.

At the 1:36 mark viewers are introduced to the DF-31 missile . Unlike other missiles in the Rocket Forces arsenal the DF-31 is entirely a nuclear missile designed to provide China with a powerful deterrent against surprise nuclear attack. In a crisis DF-31s would be scattered to the countryside, where it would be nearly impossible to locate and destroy all of them. The DF-31's main shortcoming is a lack of range , which means it is mostly unable to strike targets in the continental United States.

The missile convoys apparently practice launch procedures while under attack, as pyrotechnics and other distractions are going off while the crews are practicing. The crews also seem to practice making smoke, which would mask the missiles from detection from the air.

At the 3:51 mark we start to see DF-11 missiles . The DF-11 has the shortest range of all the missiles shown, capable of carrying a 1,100 pound warhead up to 370 miles.

Finally, at the 4:25 mark we have what appear to be Russian-made S-400 surface to air missiles . The S-400 is one of the most advanced long range SAMs in the world, and is capable of shooting down everything from low-flying cruise missiles to aircraft to even ballistic missiles. During wartime enemy aircraft will be hunting the PLARF's mobile missile systems, and S-400s would provide direct protection to these high value assets from aerial attack.

The Chinese military's reliance on missiles doesn't make them any less dangerous. Missiles are much more difficult to shoot down than aircraft, and their ability to be launched from friendly territory against distant enemy targets makes them a difficult threat to eliminate. Let's hope they'll never be used in anger.

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