China and Russia conducted their ninth combined strategic bomber patrol in the Indo-Pacific. The sorties differed from the others. It was China’s first use of the nuclear-capable H-6N bomber in a signaling event and represented the latest inconsistency in its nuclear commitments.
While Beijing has been opaque about the H-6N’s nuclear mission, evidence has emerged confirming the bomber’s role. In 2018, the United States Department of Defense’s annual “China Military Power Report” revealed that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) was assigned a nuclear mission. A year later, the H-6N made its public debut, revealing that the bottom of its fuselage had been modified to carry a large air-launched ballistic missile, which U.S. intelligence officials identified as nuclear-capable.
In 2020, research by the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) determined that the PLAAF’s only H-6N base – Neixiang – is associated with China’s nuclear weapons complex and has unique infrastructure capable of supporting nuclear-alert operations not seen at other H-6 bomber airfields. The U.S. Defense Department reported that the H-6N bomber unit became operational in 2020. Notably, although other H-6 bomber variants are based closer to the Sino-Russian bomber patrol operating areas, Beijing deployed H-6s from its only nuclear-capable unit for the sorties November 29-30, 2024, suggesting it was a deliberate choice to cast a nuclear shadow with this patrol unlike with others.
Longtime U.S. allies Japan and South Korea were almost certainly the target of the combined nuclear bomber patrol — and deployed their own aircraft in response — despite Beijing’s claims that the sorties were not targeted against any country. This judgment is based on two points. First, not only did the combined patrol conduct operations within the respective air defense identification zones (ADIZ) of Japan and South Korea, but, more importantly, they overflew the nations’ respective exclusive economic zones (EEZ). This distinction is important because China routinely asserts — in excess of what the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea prescribes — that foreign states do not have the right to conduct military activities in another country’s EEZ and that U.S. “provocative [military] flyovers” of China’s EEZ should be prohibited or restricted because Beijing considers them “a use of force or a threat to use force,” even though the operations occur in international airspace and outside Chinese territory, the Rand Corp. think tank reported.
Japan’s 2024 Defense White Paper uses similar language to describe Sino-Russian bomber patrols as “clearly intended for demonstrations of force against Japan and a grave concern,” yet Beijing ignores Tokyo’s concerns and expects Washington to make concessions.
Second, the patrol targeted Japan and South Korea in all likelihood because it fits a pattern of China using military platforms to signal displeasure toward countries. A CASI study of Chinese incursions into Japan’s ADIZ noted spikes correlating with the 2005 downturn in Sino-Japanese relations and later with the uptick in tensions over the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited East China Sea archipelago administered by Japan but claimed by Beijing.
In 2016, China’s State Council Information Office announced plans for a Sino-Russian missile defense simulation — later dubbed “Aerospace Security 2017” — tied to U.S. plans to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system in South Korea in 2017, even as Beijing’s defense ministry continued to claim the combined event was not targeted at any country. Four years later, Beijing sent 16 transport aircraft inside Malaysia’s EEZ in an in-trail tactical formation; the aircraft reversed course after passing the disputed South Luconia Shoals in the South China Sea. Then, in 2022, China and Russia conducted a combined bomber patrol in the Sea of Japan concurrent with a meeting of the Quad partnership, which includes Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. Beijing considers the Quad an anti-China political bloc intended to challenge its strategic ambitions. Again, Beijing and Moscow claimed the patrol did not target any country.
In July 2024, Beijing and Moscow conducted their first combined bomber patrol within the Alaskan ADIZ concurrent with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s multinational Rim of the Pacific naval exercise in and around the Hawaiian Islands, while claiming it was neither aimed at any country nor tied to regional or international events. The bombers were tracked and intercepted by Canadian and U.S. fighter aircraft from the North American Aerospace Defense Command as they flew off the Alaskan coast.
The Chinese defense ministry used similar language to describe the November 2024 sorties, but an article posted on the Chinese Central Military Commission’s English-language news site suggested the patrol could be linked to the U.S. reportedly considering basing mid-range capability (MRC) missiles in Japan. Other possible drivers for the patrol could be an early November 2024 Japan-South Korea-U.S. exercise or the trilateral aerial demonstration involving a U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber, accompanied by Japanese and South Korean fighters, which was conducted in response to North Korea’s October 31, 2024, test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
None of these alliance developments involved nuclear capabilities.
China’s public nuclear security assurance should seemingly preclude activities such as the November 2024 sorties, but the realities of that policy in practice continue to raise questions about the sincerity of Beijing’s commitments. The centerpiece of China’s declaratory nuclear policy is its no-first-use (NFU) pledge, in which Beijing promises not to be the first to use nuclear weapons and unconditionally undertakes neither to use nor threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones, which includes Japan and South Korea.
The bomber patrol was not the first time Beijing’s adherence to its NFU commitment has been questioned. U.S. intelligence assessments from the Cold War indicate Beijing’s nuclear weapons probably targeted population centers of nonnuclear U.S. allies, which is inconsistent with the NFU policy. According to sources including a former Chinese missile force deputy commander, Beijing used two nuclear tests in September 1969 — which featured two nuclear devices being detonated within days of each other — in part, as a deterrent signal against the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet border conflict, despite Moscow not having used nuclear weapons first. China feared a Soviet nuclear first strike at the time.
Documents from China’s missile force suggest that the threshold for nuclear use could be lowered in conflict to manage an adversary’s conventional escalation, which is inconsistent with Beijing’s NFU assurances. In 2022, Chinese military leaders reportedly debated amending the NFU policy based on a PLA National Defense University (NDU) study. With Beijing perceiving Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling as having succeeded in limiting U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, the study argued that China should publicly amend its NFU policy to enhance its deterrence against a potential intervention by U.S. conventional forces in the event of a conflict over self-governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory and threatens to annex by force.
CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping reportedly rejected the NDU recommendation. This was likely because of the expected international outcry if China abandoned its decades-long NFU policy. Also, because China already has — as one PLA officer reportedly described it — “operational workarounds” in wartime; a possible reference to the fact that the NFU policy does not prohibit Beijing from issuing threats to other nuclear-armed states, as it did in 1969.
In addition to not keeping its NFU commitments in wartime, China seems to have trouble honoring its nuclear commitments in peacetime. Its November 2024 bomber sorties with Russia seem a clear indication of that. The combined patrol also demonstrates Beijing’s commitment to its so-called “no limits” partnership with Moscow rather than to the international community. In March 2023, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged that “all nuclear powers must not deploy nuclear weapons outside their national territory and withdraw all nuclear weapons abroad.” A year later, it was reported that Russia had forward-based nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. And what was China’s response? To ignore another nuclear-related international commitment and, instead, join Russia in threatening Northeast Asia with their first combined nuclear bomber patrol.
