Department of War Just Released 2025 China Military Power Report–Full Text & Key Points Here!
Office of the Secretary of War, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2025 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense/War, 23 December 2025).
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A CACHED COPY.
The Pentagon’s new China Military Power Report focuses on concisely reviewing new PLA & related developments (rather than rehashing previous years’s analysis or providing general background). The 2025 edition (25th in the series) has some of the most extensive and informative infographics ever.
Some key reveals:
- Ream, Cambodia facility now operational.
- Widespread removals of PLA Flag and General Officers–some previously not reported publicly.
- “pier side sinking of the PLAN’s first Zhou-class [Type 041] submarine as it prepared for sea trials” confirmed on p. 35.
- p. 22 “The PLAN aims to produce six aircraft carriers by 2035 for a total of nine.”
- PLA exercises and missile coverage in Taiwan Strait and beyond.
- Massive DF-27 ICBM (Land Attack/Anti-*Ship*) range rings far into Pacific.
- p. 85 reveals the DF-27 ICBM as China’s longest-range Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM).
More analysis to follow, but this disclosure alone makes the new CMPR worth reviewing carefully!
p. 85 (screenshot below) reveals the DF-27 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to be China’s longest-range Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM)—with a range of 5,000-8,000 km: way across the Pacific. The DF-27’s 8,000-km maximum-stated range covers not only Alaska and Hawaii, but also part of the Continental United States (CONUS).
Like China’s shorter-range DF-17 and DF-21 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), and DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), the DF-27 ICBM has both land-attack and anti-ship targeting capabilities. Anti-ship targeting capabilities make at least one variant of each of these ballistic missiles an ASBM.
- See background on China’s ASBM program here.
- Download a full-text PDF of my book on the subject here.
- For previous PRC interest in, and doctrinal discussion of, a conventional ICBM, see Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Approach to Conventional Deterrence,” Chapter 1 in Roy D. Kamphausen, ed., Modernizing Deterrence: How China Coerces, Compels, and Deters (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2023), 12–27.
Other informative graphics from report:
