CSR Report RL33153 China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress by Ronald O’Rourke dated February 28, 2014. Page 8 – Figure 1. Jin (Type 094) Class Ballistic Missile Submarine Source: Photograph provided to CRS by Navy Office of Legislative Affairs, December 2010.

The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasian Daily Monitor reports on the implications of growing alliance between Russia and China reflected in their recent joint bomber patrols intercepted off S. Korea and Japan.

There is an interesting aspect to this growing alliance that might suggest more reason for US military construction and activity in the Arctic, which, in turn, may require more icebreaker support.

“Russian military expert Alexander Shirokorad…Building on earlier Russo-Chinese missile- and air-defense cooperation that necessarily involved the transmission of highly classified information between them…openly advocates for joint Russo-Chinese air- and missile-defense infrastructure in the Arctic. Unexpectedly, however, he also advances an entirely new concept of allowing Chinese nuclear-armed submarines to gain critical support from Russian Arctic ports. It is difficult to gauge to what degree Shirokorad’s article was meant to have been a justificatory trial balloon. But the piece clearly takes on additional significance when looked at in the context of the Pentagon’s annual report on China, which explicitly warns that Beijing may eventually start deploying nuclear submarines in the Arctic.”