Special to WorldTribune.com

Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon

China’s military plans to produce nearly 42,000 land-based and sea-based unmanned weapons and sensor platforms as part of its continuing, large-scale military buildup, the Pentagon’s annual report on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) disclosed Friday. …

The drone buildup is part of what the Pentagon identified as a decades-long military buildup that last year produced new multi-warhead missiles and a large number of submarines and ships. Additionally, the Pentagon for the first time confirmed China’s development of an ultra-high speed maneuvering strike vehicle as part of its growing strategic nuclear arsenal. …

“The United States and China acknowledge that the Chinese tested a hypersonic glide vehicle in 2014,” the report noted. It was the first time the Pentagon confirmed the existence of what is known as the Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle, a strike weapon that travels at the edge of space at nearly 10 times the speed of sound. …

Rick Fisher, a China military affairs analyst, said the report is the Pentagon’s most detailed assessment in recent years. “By far it is the most detailed PLA report in terms of explaining near to medium term threat vectors but does not venture enough into the far term, the later 2020s and beyond,” said Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The report also highlights the threat facing Taiwan. “It is a tragedy that the Obama administration does not pay attention to these assessments when it continually denies Taiwan new weapons systems it requires to continue to deter China,” Fisher said.

Chinese nationalism is also on the rise. The report said Communist leaders are exploiting nationalist sentiment among the Chinese “to bolster the legitimacy of the Party, deflect domestic criticism, and justify their own inflexibility in dialogues with foreign interlocutors.”

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