The likely missile field, comprising 120 silos that could potentially house weapons capable of reaching the United States mainland, was documented by researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies using satellite imagery supplied by commercial satellite company Planet Labs Inc.
The researchers compared satellite photos taken during the past four months with images captured within the past week, finding the missile site covering a grid of hundreds of square kilometers in China’s Gansu province, said researcher Jeffrey Lewis, a Chinese nuclear weapons expert who examined the images with colleague Decker Eveleth, the first person to spot the silos.
Lewis told CNN on Friday that most of the silo construction, which has yet to be completed, has likely occurred in the past six months.
“It’s really a startling pace of construction,” he said, adding that the scope of the buildup was also surprising.
“It’s a lot of silos,” Lewis said. “It’s much larger than anything we…