Nuclear triad: China deploys H-6 nuclear bombers

FPI / February 20, 2025

Geostrategy-Direct

The conversion of its H-6 bomber to a more-capable nuclear delivery system completes the nuclear triad for communist China, U.S. defense officials say.

The H-6N has a range of 3,728 miles and can be armed with an air-launched ballistic missile with a range of 1,864 miles for a combined nuclear strike range of 5,592 miles.

What sets the H-6N apart from earlier variants is that it is the first bomber in the Chinese warplane inventory that can be refueled while in flight.

“This is important because if you want to have a strategic strike capability, you have to have strategic range associated with that, and [the H-6N] is designed specifically to deliver a nuclear payload,” security correspondent Bill Gertz cited a Pentagon official as saying in a Feb. 12 Washington Times report.

“The H-6 November gives them the long lacking third leg of the nuclear triad,” one intelligence official said. “They are coming online.”

Related: New stealth bombers would complete China’s ‘strategic triad’, March 19, 2024

China is now deploying significant numbers of upgraded strategic nuclear bombers that are bolstering the Xi Jinping regime’s triad of weapons, including land-based missiles and nuclear missile submarines, the Pentagon said.

A new H-20 stealth strategic bomber is also reportedly on the drawing board.

The Chinese nuclear bomber force is being built along lines similar to those used by the Soviet and now Russian nuclear bomber force, the defense official said.

The number of deployed H-6Ns is unknown as the Chinese government does not disclose the size of its nuclear forces.

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