China’s Underground Missile Specialist – Major Sha Ziga

Major Ziga and his unit specialize in developing underground missile launching facilities for China’s strategic force, and recently the team carried out construction in northwestern China, specifically in a high-altitude, frigid region

@Kunal_Chonkar

New Delhi: Two weeks ago, Beijing’s state-controlled media published a report which read that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) had successfully launched a DF-26 intermediate-range anti-ship ballistic missile in an ongoing months-long exercise. The Chinese military experts commending DF-26’s capability of accurately striking mobile targets at sea have dubbed it as an ‘aircraft carrier killer’. The launch exercise also demonstrated its deterrence and PLA’s firm will in defending its national sovereignty and security, while it invades into others.

Meanwhile, buried in the government reports celebrating the exercises and PLARF’s role in developing strategic deterrence was the name of a lesser-known Chinese officer Major Sha Ziga. He was referred to in the report as a key officer responsible for PLARF’s modernization and evolving capabilities.

A Chinese media source featured Major Ziga and his unit in one of its report briefly outlining their sensitive and classified work across the treacherous terrains of China.

The report describes Major Ziga as a senior officer of the PLARF’s engineering and construction unit. He and his unit specialize in developing underground missile launching facilities for China’s strategic force. The team predominantly comprises sub-terrain engineers and directional drilling specialists.

According to the report, the construction work undertaken by Major Ziga and his unit has taken them to various locations in China. Speaking on his selected accomplishments, the report claims that he has successfully executed the ‘National Defense Construction Work’ in a ‘dense forest’ located in southern China in 2003, followed by overseeing the ‘Key National Defense Engineering Project’ in 2005 at a classified location, and carefully constructed a ‘Defence Complex Environment’ in 2014 at another high-profile military landscape.

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The report also states that recently the officer and his men carried out construction work in an area with a ‘complex environment’ in northwestern China, specifically in a ‘high-altitude, frigid region’. Analysts indicated that the region could be the autonomous region of Xinjiang, where China ends and Central Asia – once known as Chinese-Turkestan – begins. The region is a vast, isolated region of searing deserts and snowy mountains, formerly the most arduous section of the ancient Silk Road.