30kt is a nuclear warhead. No proper nuclear power uses nuclear warheads anymore, they all use thermonuclear warheads. It's damned difficult to get a mere 30kt yield uses a thermonuclear warhead. What's more likely is Hyper made a typo and didn't add an extra zero at the end of 30 to make it 300kt, which is much more in line with expectations.
China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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30kt is a nuclear warhead. No proper nuclear power uses nuclear warheads anymore, they all use thermonuclear warheads. It's damned difficult to get a mere 30kt yield uses a thermonuclear warhead. What's more likely is Hyper made a typo and didn't add an extra zero at the end of 30 to make it 300kt, which is much more in line with expectations.
duncanidaho
Junior Member
To be excat, the Hiroshima bomb had a ~16 kT warhead and the Nagaski bomb a ~21 kT one. But in both case the effect was devasting.
Hyperwarp
Captain
I am going to re-upload the slides for both ICBM and SLBM. I hope someone can give a full proper translation. From what I was told and values I could decipher -
1st slide: DF-41
Range - 14000 km
Warheads - 1x (5.5 MT), 6x (650 KT each), 10x (150 KT each)
2nd slide: SLBM
JL-2A?/2B?
Range - 12000 km
Warheads - 1x (250 KT), 3x (60 KT each)
JL-2
Range - Greater than 7400 km?
Warheads - ?
JL-1
Range - 1700 km
Warheads - 1x (200 KT)?
1st slide: DF-41
Range - 14000 km
Warheads - 1x (5.5 MT), 6x (650 KT each), 10x (150 KT each)
2nd slide: SLBM
JL-2A?/2B?
Range - 12000 km
Warheads - 1x (250 KT), 3x (60 KT each)
JL-2
Range - Greater than 7400 km?
Warheads - ?
JL-1
Range - 1700 km
Warheads - 1x (200 KT)?
Meh, a few kilotonnes here or there. As you said, the effect was devastating and strong enough that the world still didn't forget about that.
Just saw this.
Very interesting.
Where did you find these pictures from?
For the "JL-2" panel, it seems to say range is 7,400km-12,000km with 3-6 warheads.
For the "JL-2X" it interestingly lists 12,000km with a more specific warhead/yield count. I wonder if that suggests the range of the "JL-2" is variable depending on how big a payload it carries, whereas the "JL-2X" is able to carry the "full" payload while still attaining the "maximum" range of JL-2.
I remember discussing with Mirage over on CDF a year or so back about what the actual range of JL-2 is, and he made a fairly convincing argument that JL-2 probably had a range enough to cover a good part of CONTUS in at least some forum, from Chinese waters, lest the Navy would not have invested so much into a missile like that and so many 094s to carry them.
It's also VERY interesting that they describe the weight of the different warheads for some of the missiles, e.g.: for DF-41, the 550 MT warhead is said to be 1.6 tons in mass, the 650 KT warhead is 250kg, the 150kt warhead is 165kg...
The presentation does not look un-legit, as there have been some similar PLA presentations over the last year that have been strangely open, but for such numbers about the strategic nuclear deterrence to be unveiled is unprecedented and makes me wonder if it's legit...
If JL-2 is 13m long (which I think is a reasonable estimate of its length), that is only 0.6m shorter than Trident D5 which has a range of over 12,000 km.
Depending on how big of a payload that JL-2 carries (e.g.: 2 or 3 MiRVs instead of 6), I don't think there is a reason to doubt JL-2 would be able to attain a similarly sized range to Trident D5 based on dimensions alone (but perhaps with a slightly lower equivalent payload).
antiterror13
Brigadier
American ICBM have longer range than the Chinese (same dimension/weight) due to more advanced solid fuel technology .... but China is catching up very fast and perhaps right now the Chinese tech level of solid fuel almost on parity
Hyperwarp
Captain
Well you know I am one of the super advanced humans even the NSA gives me the red-carpet treatment.
I would have got these slides from either from CDF or that leaker at defence.pk. -
Must really careful when deciphering. A technical mandarin speaker is require. I tried using image sharpening, OCR and online translators but the images are to blurry.
From what I could decipher,
Regarding SLBM -
JL-2: 3-6 probably means single warhead 30 KT/60 KT
JL-2X?: 1$25#, 3$4~6# probably means 1 warhead @ 250 KT (250 probably written as 25# or 25x10) or 3 warheads @ 40 KT/60 KT ((4-6)#) each
JL-1: 1?20# probably means single warhead 200 KT (20#))
From what I can tell the JL-2 cannot go beyond 7,400 km with 200 KT warhead used in the JL-1.
Regarding DF-41 -
1600? $550# - probably means single warhead @ 5.5 MT (550#) 1600 Weight?
6$, 250?, -65# - probably means 6 warheads @ 650 KT (65#) each. 250 Weight?
10$, 150?, -15# - probably means warhead 10 warheads @ 150 KT (15#) each. 150 Weight?
Again, It is a real mess. We need a mandarin speaker who can actually understands technical/military terminology used within the PRC.
Yes, sigh. I meant which post or user put those pictures up? I.e.: was it some random on PDF or CDF or someone more legitimate.
But anyhow, that is more or less a moot question now given it seems like the pictures are not deemed as very legitimate
To be honest it is more the quality of the photo which is the issue. If the quality was better I could translate it.
But even though it's blurry, I think I can say that the JL-2 "3-6" part is definitely not referring to kilotons, but rather it says “3-6 个 something 弹头," i.e.: 3-6 something warheads. The "something" word is hard to make out but looks like it can be "核" which, in this sentence means 3-6 nuclear warheads.
The word "个" means "number of" in this case.
But it's all a bit superfluous anyway, because the pictures are almost definitely not credible.
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