China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

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Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
War game Simulations conducted by US has been showing that US fail to defeat China.
One cannot discount the notion of US learning from these Simulations. That's the whole point. To learn and adapt.

Thank you. The information that WZ-8 was launched by H-6 is new to me. I think I get the idea of their usage and how they better fit into the battle plan clearly.

But WZ-8 would be used only to evaluate the effectiveness of the AshBMs, right? It won't be doing the Target acquisition job.

It is both surveillance and damage assessment or multifunction

Such an intelligence-gathering capability has many applications, not just locating carrier strike groups. Just the function of providing damage assessments after ballistic and cruise missile strikes on strategic locations throughout the region would be incredibly important as the information it collects could save valuable missiles for other targets and allow PLA commanders to execute an accelerated anti-access campaign during a time of war.

The idea that China only has 100 warhead is contrary to logic and fact It is propagated by FAS that like to make China the poster boy of disarmament. China has one of the largest Uranium mine in the world and has researching atom bomb since 1960 They have the uranium enriching plant technology It can be easily hidden inside underground facility just like the Iranian does. They have domestically design nuclear reactor that can produced Plutonium they are not restricted since they don't use foreign technology. They have 3rd generation civilian reactor that just went live yesterday

As to the will and determination of it, Chairman Mao once said we will eat grass if need be but we have to have A bomb and satellite We see how China progress in space technology but somehow when it come to nuclear warhead it stuck to 100 for decades does not make sense !
 
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ansy1968

Brigadier
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Jeffrey Lewis...I used to be his intern long long time ago. I am fully aware that both he and I could be totally wrong though.
@Josh Luo

I'm a fan of his work, now I know why his paper is such good read;), So your the one who do all the research within China? what I know is that he had a lot of contact and a frequent visitor?
 

SpicySichuan

Senior Member
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@Josh Luo

I'm a fan of his work, now I know why his paper is such good read;), So your the one who do all the research within China? what I know is that he had a lot of contact and a frequent visitor?
I helped him research the history of China's ballistic missile development, as well as gather Weibo images of all those intentional leaks.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
Here's an interesting view.

I'm sure many of us here recall
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杨承军, retired member of PLARF Staff
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Besides the "people not in this sensitive field should keep their opinions to themselves" at the start of the article, he unexpectedly revealed some interesting information about the rocket force:

核武器质量。注重对现役核武器的技术和材料更新,与核大国相比我们的核武器质量并不落后。
Quality of nuclear weapons - much attention is paid to maintenance and update of current deployed weapons, China's nuclear arsenal is not inferior to any other nuclear weapon state in quality.

核武器数量。在按照预定的规划、计划、根据国际核形势变化,科学确定发展数量,注重弥补服役期满的退役武器。
Quantity of nuclear weapons - number of weapons follow carefully calculated, science guided plans, with attention paid to international political situations. Special attention is paid to prompt replacement of any weapons reaching end of service life.

生存能力。基本阵地坑道、竖井的抗压强度可靠可信;当前重点发展的是能够实施机动作战型号。
Survivability - silo and bases are sufficiently hardened and reliable. Current focus is on developing mobile weapons

反应时间。已经从我刚刚入伍时的需要几天、数小时缩短到数分钟;能够在敌核武器落地前实施预警核反击。
Response time - when I (杨承军) first joined RF/2A response time was measured in days. It has gradually decreased to hours and now minutes. Now we are fully capable of carrying out launch on warning

命中精度。已经从当初的数公里误差,减小到百米以内,以最大限度的减少附带毁伤。
Accuracy - CEP use to be several kilometres, now it's within 100m. This ensures greatly reduced secondary destruction

毁伤威力。可以反击目标性质及幅员,选择不同威力和当量的战斗部。
Yield - warheads of different yields are available, to suit targets of different nature and area

突防能力。运用多弹头技术,及抗干扰、释放干扰、改变壳体形状及变轨滑翔技术等不断提升突防能力。
Penetration - MIRV, interference, anti-interference, variable geometry and glide re-entry capabilities continue to raise weapon's capability to penetrate defence

协同保障。军种内的各种技术协同、作战时的各项保障没有任何障碍。
Joint forces - different branches of the PLA are well capable of working as one, to ensure no issues in times of war

生产能力和潜力。我国核武器的并没有达到最大的生产量,具有强大的生产潜力。
Production and strategic reserve - China's nuclear weapon production has not reached peak capacity, vast amount of reserved production capability exist.

I don't think Hu and Yang are fighting it out with words in the media in this case. Rather I think they are working together to get the word out to those who need to hear it.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
I wanted to look up what "vast amount of reserved production capability" means and found this:

swu.jpg

SWU = separative work units, which is a way to measure uranium enrichment capacity that is agnostic to target enrichment level. Now this doesn't translate directly to warhead making capacity since for one, warheads are made with plutonium which needs to be breed in reactors from U-238. Note plutonium cannot be enriched since its isotopes are too similar, even more so than uranium. Weapons grade plutonium have to be breed to have the correct isotopic ratio. Nevertheless it gives us some idea since reactors take U-235 to run.

np.jpg

China has more than twice the SWU as US and a lot less reactor capacity, and that's not taking into account naval reactors. I understand US can get away with this partly because of the Megatons to Megawatts Program where they take HEU (mostly Russian, but some US too) stockpiled during the cold war, down blend them to LEU and use them for reactor fuel, and partly because they just straight up buy LEU from Russia given all their excess capacity.

Nevertheless compare China to France which have similar power generation capacity and both have some nuclear warships and warheads and you can see China has a lot more SWU than necessary.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
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2021年2月4日,中国在境内进行了一次陆基中段反导拦截技术试验,试验达到了预期目的。这一试验是防御性的,不针对任何国家。

On 04/02/2021, China have successfully conducted a land based mid-course anti-ballistic missile interception test within its border, the test reached its goal. This test is defensive in nature and is not aimed at any country.
 

Xizor

Captain
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On 04/02/2021, China have successfully conducted a land based mid-course anti-ballistic missile interception test within its border, the test reached its goal. This test is defensive in nature and is not aimed at any country.
Mid course interception might be the most technologically challenging, right? So probably against an Indian attack.

But it ought to be terminal course that China be focusing on when considering the threat posed by US.
China's ABM is extremely secretive. I know next to nothing on that.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
Mid course interception might be the most technologically challenging, right? So probably against an Indian attack.

But it ought to be terminal course that China be focusing on when considering the threat posed by US.
China's ABM is extremely secretive. I know next to nothing on that.
Midcourse is the most practical I thought? Boost phase is pretty much useless against giant countries like China/Russia/US because they can hide missiles in the middle of the country where you'll be hard pressed to reach with anything but crazy stuff like orbit based gamma ray laser. Terminal is hard because you're up against a crap load of warheads due to MIRV and even warhead decoys.

Land based mid course ABM is not useful for China to defend against US ICMBs and questionably useful against any MRBMs based around Asia, for both of those you would want the system to be sea based so you can push the intercept further out.

However land based mid course ABM is very useful against India's arsenal.
 
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