Reported By:
| Edited By: |Source: ANI |Updated: Nov 30, 2011, 06:49 PM IST
A group of Georgetown University students have assembled the largest public database of over 3,000 miles of tunnels dug by China to hide and move their missiles and nuclear arms.
According to the Washington Post, the students have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data about the tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
The 363-page study has not yet been released, but already it has sparked a congressional hearing and been circulated among top officials in the Pentagon, including the Air Force vice chief of staff.
It reportedly concludes by saying that China’s nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than the estimates of arms control experts.
“I don’t even want to know how many hours I spent on it,” said Nick Yarosh, 22, an international politics senior at Georgetown.
“But you ask people what they did in college, most just say I took this class, I was in this club. I can say I spent it reading Chinese nuclear strategy and Second Artillery manuals. For a nerd like me, that really means something,” he added.
The study’s critics, however, have questioned the unorthodox Internet-based research used by the students.
