Taiwan says China quietly test-fired a submarine-launched ICBM during its unannounced drills

China's navy test-fired a submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile in early November as part of a large military exercise around Taiwan and the Western Pacific that Beijing never announced, Taiwanese national security officials said on 13 November. According to accounts of their briefing published by Taiwanese media, the missile was launched from a sea area off eastern China and flew towards the Chinese interior. The officials did not say which missile type was used.

The officials argued that the range shown by the launch, rather than its direction, was the point. They said the missile's reach covers the US territory of Guam and Hawaii, and noted that many Chinese missile types are nicknamed Guam express or Hawaii express. Beijing has not publicly described the launch, and TaiwanDefence could not independently confirm it.

According to the reports, the security services judge that the launch was one of the planned training subjects of the wider exercise. Others included breaking through the first island chain and simulated attacks on forces stationed in other parts of that chain.

The officials also pointed to a Russian launch a few days earlier. On 28 October Russia test-fired a Bulava submarine-launched missile from the Pacific side of the Sea of Okhotsk at a range in north-western Russia. They said Chinese and Russian strategic thinking was closely aligned and that both were showing they could break out of geographic containment. Mirror Media reported, however, that a security source said further intelligence was still needed to show whether the two launches were directly coordinated.

The exercise itself was flagged earlier this month by the US-based Institute for the Study of War, whose findings all three outlets cite. Since early November more than 100 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels have massed around Taiwan and in the Western Pacific, drawn from the Eastern, Northern and Southern theatre commands. The officials said the scale exceeded the Justice Mission 2025 drill held at the end of last year.

Unlike the Joint Sword series and Justice Mission 2025, the officials noted, the PLA gave this activity no code name and declared no closure zones. In their view Beijing wanted to keep up military pressure while avoiding friction before it hosts the APEC leaders' summit in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November. They also said the atmosphere of threat was meant to weigh on voters before Taiwan's local elections later this year, without staging a showy drill that could provoke a backlash among Taiwanese.

The officials described the operation as the first strategic exercise run at the level of the Central Military Commission since sweeping purges of senior PLA commanders. They said China held no such exercise in 2025. They added that the services still operate under separate command and control systems, so the PLA continues to lack a genuine joint command mechanism.

ETtoday recalled that in early July 2026 the PLA fired a nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile into the Pacific. Taiwan's National Security Council secretary-general Joseph Wu said at the time that it was a JL-2 and that it overflew the Philippines.

The disclosure matters because it ties China's sea-based nuclear deterrent to an exercise that Taiwan reads as practice for isolating the island and holding off US forces, at a moment when Beijing has chosen to keep its military signalling unannounced.