China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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bajingan
Senior Member
I agree with your point that China have enough warheads to ensure MAD against anyone
but more problematic is how to ensure survivability with such low numbers of warheads
How many warheads will survive a decapitating first strike if any, not to mention the growing sophistication of ABM missile shield
Maybe China great wall of hidden tunnels might help or change its posture to launch on warning?
Not just hidden tunnels but also the terrain. Most of these tunnels are located in a very mountainous terrain.
And mountains are good at standing against nuclear blasts - especially granite ones. Even in the case of a perforated strike, the complex terrain of China coupled with the tunnel system, forests and caves ensure that a handful of units would remain ( a handful is just a underestimate).
I'd say that even multiple Tsar Bomba level nukes (maybe 50 of them) wouldn't do the job.
Also, this is irrespective of wheher it's an air burst or ground burst.
Air bursts won't cut it.
Ground bursts won't cut it either if you wanted to penetrate the mountains.
US likely has information on the tunnel networks and maps of China. They'd even have information on where DF-5 series is located. But as China moves ahead with very mobile ICBM systems, it's very safe to say that these plans are useless to a good extend.
Also, even if US manages to put a GPS tracker in the TEL systems of China using a spy network, the fact that some of them ride inside tunnels underground means that GPS or other satellites won't be able to recieve signals.
At this point I'd just give up
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I doubt the US would know where every single ICBM China possesses is in a decapitation strike. That's something they brag out of propaganda. The US didn't take on North Korea with only a few nukes. If it was so easy and assured, certainly North Korea would've been within their capabilities.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
One missile is a decapitation strike, 300 is MAD. I don’t care who it is, but if a country seems 300 ICBMs coming their way, they are launching everything they have before even one of those incomings land.
Sometimes I think people misunderstand what second strike means. China is never going to wait for the enemy first strike to land before launching their second strike reply.
And as has already been explained, the US cannot hope to have anything like an even fair
chanof being able to have targeting solutions for even the fraction of the Chinese nuclear forces out in the open on active deployment. The proportion in reserve in China’s underground Great Wall is basically untouchable.
Once they go in those tunnels, they are essentially untouchable, even if the US can pinpoint exactly where in the thousands (maybe even tens of thousands or more) of miles of tunnels. Which in itself is essentially impossible.
On top of that, China is also rapidly improving its SSBN fleet, soon will be adding Stealth strategic Bombers to its arsenal, and also working on its own ABM defences.
I would say China is spending its money well investing in improving the quality of its nuclear delivery systems rather than relying on numbers. At the end of the day, it’s the number of warheads you can hit the enemy with that matters. Having a million warheads is still meaningless if you have no reliable way to delivery them.
I've mentioned this before but the biggest flaw China has in regards to its approach in nuclear weapons use is having a "No First Use" policy. IMO China should amend its nuclear weapons policy to allow for first strikes.
No First Use policy made sense in the 1960s when China was developing nukes because it was meant as a public policy tool to ensure that its nuclear weapons program doesn't get killed off/sabotaged by a combined U.S./USSR joint strike (e.g. China was only developing nukes for defensive purposes and will never be used offensively). But in today's climate the NFU policy is vastly outdated especially as China edges closer to surpassing the U.S. which is bound to create heightened tensions.
The only reason the U.S. toys with the idea of "decapitating strikes", "tactical nukes" and even conventional strikes against China is because of China's NFU policy. NFU is essentially forcing China to respond to the aggressor, which is highly risky since it means an engagement on the enemy's terms. China is also being forced to fight a conventional war if attacked first. Some U.S. strategists may even think that NFU + China's estimated small nukes arsenal present an opportunity/weak spot in attacking China. Ideally, China would amend its nuclear weapons policy, remove NFU, and extend nuclear weapons coverage to include disputed areas like Taiwan. If this were the case, discussions of "second strikes" and U.S. military intervention in Taiwan would be completely off the table. It would also remove the threat of U.S. allies like Japan/Australia participating in any joint actions with the U.S. against China if those countries were subject to nuclear retaliation.
The U.S./West still fears Russia to this day not because of Russia's conventional military capabilities but because of Russia's nuclear weapons policy. Russia has communicated clearly that they will use nukes preemptively and even in conventional warfare if Russia were attacked by overwhelming enemy conventional forces. That's true deterrence.
No First Use policy made sense in the 1960s when China was developing nukes because it was meant as a public policy tool to ensure that its nuclear weapons program doesn't get killed off/sabotaged by a combined U.S./USSR joint strike (e.g. China was only developing nukes for defensive purposes and will never be used offensively). But in today's climate the NFU policy is vastly outdated especially as China edges closer to surpassing the U.S. which is bound to create heightened tensions.
The only reason the U.S. toys with the idea of "decapitating strikes", "tactical nukes" and even conventional strikes against China is because of China's NFU policy. NFU is essentially forcing China to respond to the aggressor, which is highly risky since it means an engagement on the enemy's terms. China is also being forced to fight a conventional war if attacked first. Some U.S. strategists may even think that NFU + China's estimated small nukes arsenal present an opportunity/weak spot in attacking China. Ideally, China would amend its nuclear weapons policy, remove NFU, and extend nuclear weapons coverage to include disputed areas like Taiwan. If this were the case, discussions of "second strikes" and U.S. military intervention in Taiwan would be completely off the table. It would also remove the threat of U.S. allies like Japan/Australia participating in any joint actions with the U.S. against China if those countries were subject to nuclear retaliation.
The U.S./West still fears Russia to this day not because of Russia's conventional military capabilities but because of Russia's nuclear weapons policy. Russia has communicated clearly that they will use nukes preemptively and even in conventional warfare if Russia were attacked by overwhelming enemy conventional forces. That's true deterrence.
bajingan
Senior Member
I agreed with what you said, if China is to insist on minimum deterence policy and NFU, it should at least declare publicy that now it has launch on warning posture
No more of that warheads is separated from missiles nonsense, as it will only encourage the us to miscalculate
The science on nuclear winter is not entirely clear.
According to a 2011 Science article, "Since 1983, the projected worst-case cooling has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree-days Celsius (a measure of the severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term 'nuclear winter' into question."
Further the research on this seems to be subject to heavy political debate, with many people unwilling to call into question nuclear winter for fear of being accused of being pro-nuclear weapons:
In any case, whether 100 warheads alone would cause a nuclear winter (debatable) alone is irrelevant. The goal is never to get to that point in the first place. The question is whether 300 warheads alone is enough to really endure deterrence and not give the Americans a sense of overconfidence. The answer is no:
"At the same time, America intensified work on long-range conventional missiles that could hit any spot on Earth with great accuracy within an hour. The Pentagon is pouring billions of dollars into hypersonic gliders that can do just this (China is building these too, but its own gliders seem to lack the range to hit America).
China fears that such weapons might wipe out most of its warheads and launchers. Even rudimentary American missile-defences would then be able to mop up the “ragged retaliation” from China’s surviving nukes. Many American strategists reckon that this strategy—known as damage limitation—is preferable to accepting mutually assured destruction. America believes that this possibility gives it a psychological advantage in any crisis."
China's goal is to take 'damage limitation' off the table -- which means improving the survivability of its forces, improving the delvery mechanisms, improving second strike capability, and increasing the number of warheads. The main issue here is psychological. Having far fewer warheads than the U.S., China risks having the U.S. adopt a more risky and offensive nuclear posture in the hope of overcoming MAD achieving dominance (perhaps with new technologies such as hypersonic glide vehicles or space-based bunker-busting munitions that can reach anywhere in the world within one hour). There must be no question in the American strategists' or public's minds of China's MAD capabilities, which means China must aim to achieve as much redundancy as possible in nuclear capabilities.
According to a 2011 Science article, "Since 1983, the projected worst-case cooling has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree-days Celsius (a measure of the severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term 'nuclear winter' into question."
Further the research on this seems to be subject to heavy political debate, with many people unwilling to call into question nuclear winter for fear of being accused of being pro-nuclear weapons:
In any case, whether 100 warheads alone would cause a nuclear winter (debatable) alone is irrelevant. The goal is never to get to that point in the first place. The question is whether 300 warheads alone is enough to really endure deterrence and not give the Americans a sense of overconfidence. The answer is no:
"At the same time, America intensified work on long-range conventional missiles that could hit any spot on Earth with great accuracy within an hour. The Pentagon is pouring billions of dollars into hypersonic gliders that can do just this (China is building these too, but its own gliders seem to lack the range to hit America).
China fears that such weapons might wipe out most of its warheads and launchers. Even rudimentary American missile-defences would then be able to mop up the “ragged retaliation” from China’s surviving nukes. Many American strategists reckon that this strategy—known as damage limitation—is preferable to accepting mutually assured destruction. America believes that this possibility gives it a psychological advantage in any crisis."
China's goal is to take 'damage limitation' off the table -- which means improving the survivability of its forces, improving the delvery mechanisms, improving second strike capability, and increasing the number of warheads. The main issue here is psychological. Having far fewer warheads than the U.S., China risks having the U.S. adopt a more risky and offensive nuclear posture in the hope of overcoming MAD achieving dominance (perhaps with new technologies such as hypersonic glide vehicles or space-based bunker-busting munitions that can reach anywhere in the world within one hour). There must be no question in the American strategists' or public's minds of China's MAD capabilities, which means China must aim to achieve as much redundancy as possible in nuclear capabilities.
Well it's not rocket science. The impact of nukes on human civilization will be devastating. But the energy is no where near to set a winter or summer.The great Alaskan quake, second biggest earth quake since 1900 that shook Alaska for 8 minutes at Richter scale of 9.2, released energy ×50 times than current combined global nuclear arsenal's power.
People is scared of fall out. But nukes don't do fall out as much as reactors do because of higher degree of presence of radioactive materials
Let me get this straight, America "intensified work" on long range conventional missile that could hit anywhere on earth with "accuracy " , but China's "seem to lack" the range to hit America?
Is this another version of America's 8000 ton of gold reserve story?
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