China's Big New Nukes

It’s officially official — China has a nulcear-tipped, MIRV’d ICBM capable of reaching anywhere in the United States:

A government environmental monitoring centre in Shaanxi said on its website that a military facility in the province was developing Dongfeng-41 (DF-41) missiles, the Global Times reported.

The DF-41 is designed to have a range of 12,000 kilometres, according to a report by Jane’s Strategic Weapon Systems, putting it among the world’s longest-range missiles.

It is “possibly capable of carrying multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles”, the US Defense Department said in a report in June, referring to a payload of several nuclear warheads.

China’s military is highly secretive, and the Global Times said it had not previously acknowledged the existence of the DF-41.

We’ve unofficially known about the DF-41 for a while, so the question is why China decided now to reveal it.