China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

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ACuriousPLAFan

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btw, just looking through some old lyman posts. This is kind of interesting.

I will leave out his other comments, but basically he is saying that Chinese medium/long range ballistic missile technology has advanced so much (in this 4th generation) that they have no problem exporting it to the Saudis something like DF-21C

This was reported before, but says that they can have lowered cost of DF-17 to 10 to 20 million RMB (let's just say $2 million) and cheaper than Tomahawk missiles. DF-27 will appear this year (2022) and this medium/long range HGV will also be mass produced. Says solid fuel auto injection technology is already been using on medium to long range BMs, whatever that means.
May I have the link to that old lyman post that you have quoted?
 

SEAD

Junior Member
Registered Member
btw, just looking through some old lyman posts. This is kind of interesting.

I will leave out his other comments, but basically he is saying that Chinese medium/long range ballistic missile technology has advanced so much (in this 4th generation) that they have no problem exporting it to the Saudis something like DF-21C

This was reported before, but says that they can have lowered cost of DF-17 to 10 to 20 million RMB (let's just say $2 million) and cheaper than Tomahawk missiles. DF-27 will appear this year (2022) and this medium/long range HGV will also be mass produced. Says solid fuel auto injection technology is already been using on medium to long range BMs, whatever that means.
Just ignore lyman, this guy is anything but a reliable resource.
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Colonel
Registered Member
May I have the link to that old lyman post that you have quoted?
Nevermind, forget about it. Already found his Weibo post.

Here's his Weibo post in full:
中国正输出安全这一全球稀缺的公共产品。

这是建立后美国时代国际秩序的重要步骤,也是美国从中东大撤军后中东各国迫切的需求。

中国在中东的隐形盟友就是沙特,还有站它前面的巴基斯坦。

80年代直接卖DF3成品,后面又给了DF21成品。

这次被美国披露直接给了固体弹道导弹组装工厂。型号估计是DF21C。应该卖不少钱,石油人民币又进了一步。

当然固体燃料技术不可能给沙特,甚至固体燃料自动罐装技术也不可能给沙特,这是中国的独门绝学。

靠着固体燃料自动罐装技术、高超音速乘波体技术、廉价导引头技术。中国实现了乘波体高超DF17的大批量生产。产量直接上四位数,单价仅一千多万RMB。比美国最新的战斧式巡航导弹还便宜。

DF27今年也已出现,未来中远程乘波体弹道导弹也将大批量生产。目前固体燃料自动灌装技术已在中远程弹道导弹上应用。

赫鲁晓夫说的像生产香肠一样生产弹道导弹,只有中国实现了。

世界领先的第四代弹道导弹技术成熟,是中国放心输出中程乃至中远程弹道导弹技术的前提。

Rough translation:
China is exporting security, a globally scarce public good.

This is an important step in building a post-American international order and an urgent need for Middle Eastern countries following the great U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East.

China's invisible allies in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, which stands in front of it.

In the 80s, it directly sold DF3 finished products, and later gave DF21 finished products.

This time it was disclosed by the US that it was given directly to a solid ballistic missile assembly plant. The model is estimated to be DF21C. it should sell for a lot of money, and the oil RMB (petroyuan) has gone one step further.

Of course, the solid fuel technology could not be given to Saudi Arabia, and even the automatic solid fuel canister technology could not be given to Saudi Arabia, which is China's unique expertise.

This is China's unique technology. It relies on solid fuel automatic tanking technology, hypersonic wave body technology, and cheap guide head technology. China has achieved the mass production of the wave multiplier high speed DF17. The production volume is directly on four figures, and the unit price is only 10 million RMB, which is cheaper than the latest Tomahawk cruise missile of the United States.

The DF27 has also emerged this year, and future medium- and long-range wave-body ballistic missiles will also be mass-produced. Solid fuel automatic filling technology is now being applied to medium- and long-range ballistic missiles.

Khrushchev's talk of producing ballistic missiles like sausages has been realized only by China.

The maturity of the world's leading fourth-generation ballistic missile technology is a prerequisite for China's assured export of medium-range and even medium- and long-range ballistic missile technology.
 

Kalec

Junior Member
Registered Member
I don't even understand the rationale behind SSBN parity simply it is the most crippled leg of Chinese nuclear deterrence and why should China compete with US with the most expensive option in an imaginary nuclear war. Meanwhile spending less than your adversary is the only way to actually win a nuclear war.

Each SSBN is deployed with 12 launcher and every SLBM is able to be tipped with only one 650kt warhead, whereas a single DF-41 can tip 2 or 3 such warheads with a similar survivability. More importantly, the very survivability is a myth since around half of fleets will be in maintenance against a first strike and being destroyed in the shipyard.

A 50% survival rate doesn't make SSBN any better than silo field which maintains a higher survival rate even counterattack AFTER the first inbound warhead explodes on the ground. Arm control ppl acting like there is no middle ground between all destroyed on the ground and counterattack before the first inbound warhead exploding then arguing about the non-existent false conclusion they created on silo launched unsafety.
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Colonel
Registered Member
Just ignore lyman, this guy is anything but a reliable resource.
I believe we should analyse what lyman2003 said first.

I will quote what @tphuang has translated:
I will leave out his other comments, but basically he is saying that Chinese medium/long range ballistic missile technology has advanced so much (in this 4th generation) that they have no problem exporting it to the Saudis something like DF-21C

This was reported before, but says that they can have lowered cost of DF-17 to 10 to 20 million RMB (let's just say $2 million) and cheaper than Tomahawk missiles. DF-27 will appear this year (2022) and this medium/long range HGV will also be mass produced. Says solid fuel auto injection technology is already been using on medium to long range BMs, whatever that means.
I would like to point out a few of lyman2003's statements from @tphuang's post:

1. DF-21 export to Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia has indeed purchased DF-21 all the way back in 2007, and again in September 2014.

Besides, China also cooperated with the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force through the Golden Wheel Project (金轮工程) to operate those missiles:
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Furthermore, China has also assisted Saudi Arabia with setting up manufacturing lines for solid-fueled ballistic missiles of unknown type (presumably DF-21 as well), which was revealed through satellite photos in late 2021:
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So, no surprises there.

2. Price tags of individual DF-17 - This July the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the USAF for Acquisition has claimed that China is acquiring new weapons 5-6 times faster than the US, and China is also spending 1/20th that of the US to attain the same level of capability of the US:
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What followed is some back-and-forth discussion regarding the claims, and thus, relates to the estimation of individual unit price of Chinese BMs and HGVs. As far as I could find on Baidu, the generally accepted range of pricing for one DF-17 lies around 10-20 million RMB (around 1.4-2.8 million USD), which corresponds to what lyman2003 has claimed. There is even a claim as recent as two months ago that once DF-17 production rate hikes up, the price for DF-17 could be further reduced to 7 million RMB per unit (around 983 thousand USD).

One Tomahawk cruise missile today costs around 1.4-2 million USD. Hence, I think the more correct description would be that DF-17 is estimated to be on-par or just slightly more expensive than the Tomahawks, not cheaper.

So again, no surprises there.

3. Number and production rate of DF-17s - It is claimed by lyman2003 that China currently already has DF-17 in 4-digits, i.e. more than 1000 DF-17 has been manufactured thus far. Of course, there is no viable way to verify this other than rough guesstimates based on satellite imagery, etc. But is such production rate impossible? I don't think so.

Back in the 1960s, the US is capable of fielding 1000 Minuteman ICBMs in just 5 years (1962-1967):
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So if the US can produce that many Minutemans in just 5 years in the 1960s, I don't see how China is incapable of produce DF-17 in similar numbers, if not more within the last few years, especially with China's present industrial might?

4. DF-27 - Thus far, there has been no official confirmation from the Chinese government nor the PLA regarding the existence of the DF-27. Despite this, bits and pieces of rumors regarding DF-27 may have surfaced on Weibo earlier.

What comes as a semi-official acknolwedgement regarding the DF-27 first came with the US Department of Defense's "2021 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the PRC", which mentioned that "China may be developing a hypersonic missile called Dongfeng-27" (DF-27).

There is also this Tweet which dived into an unknown missile that was spotted in an intersection in the city of Xinyu, Jiangxi Province this early August (when everyone is hyping over Pelosi's Taiwan visit and subsequent PLA response):

Unroll the thread:
I think we should revisit this unidentified vehicle spotted in Xinyu prefecture in early August. The bottom line- I suspect it's a DF-27 missile.

My unskilled attempt to measure the vehicle's length based on geographic references in the video suggests it spans most of the intersection, putting it at 20-ish meters long. That would put it at a couple of meters longer than a DF-26 TEL.

I suppose it's possible this is a missile reload/carrier vehicle, but it looks like the missile runs nearly the entire length of the vehicle, which would make it longer than a DF-26 or DF-17, but is clearly also not a known ICBM.

Furthermore, this missile vehicle presumably belongs to the PLARF's 635th Brigade (which has a launch battalion garrisoned a mere 5km away from where this video was filmed). 635 Brigade presently owns CJ-10 cruise missiles, which are MUCH smaller than what we see here.

Possibility 1: This is a support vehicle for a known missile with an excessively long storage bay. Given that it's a new chassis type, this would point towards the DF-17 or CJ-100. But still, this vehicle seems too long for either.

Possibility 2: This is a DF-27. Given what the 2021 CMPR has referenced in suggesting the DF-27 has a range somewhere between an IRBM and ICBM, having a TEL slightly longer than a DF-26 makes sense.

Other possibilities: This is another unidentified missile for which there is no publicly known designator or a mockup that isn't a real military vehicle.

I am leaning towards Possibility 2 (this is a DF-27) mostly due to the length and what appears to be a cover for the missile running the entire length of the vehicle. If this is the case, this video suggests an operational unit already has at least two of them.

That would mean the DF-27 is either at the operational test and evaluation phase or no kidding entering the force. Previous indicators suggest 2-4 years between a brigade receiving a new missile to announced operational capability. But that's preceded by 4-5 years of OT&E.

Since these are showing up at an operational unit (635 Brigade), I'm leaning more towards the 2-4 years vs 4-5 years. Regardless, that puts an IOC sometime between essentially now (unlikely) all the way to maybe 2026.

But what would DF-27s be used for? Well, CMPR just says it's a "long-range" ballistic missile with possible ranges of 5,000km (which opens up Alaska and Northern Australia) up to 8,000km (which covers the rest of Australia and parts of Hawaii).

This seems redundant in a nuclear sense. The newer DF-31s and DF-41 can easily range all of this and more. This leads me to suspect this is for a conventional strike mission. And given the PLARF's propensity for "multidomain effects", more than just fixed land targets.

Therefore, as of now, I think there are sufficient reasons to believe:
1. DF-27 actually exists;
2. DF-27 is likely an improved and advanced version of DF-17, i.e. one HGV mounted on top of one BM;
3. DF-27 is likely to have effective ranges that are on par with DF-26 or DF-31; and
3. DF-27 is either still WIP, or already in active service with the PLARF.

Plus, TBF, lyman2003 hits a lot of accurate spots with his Weibo post.
 
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tphuang

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For Bohai, we can forget wake flow just because optical image can clearly show the dark silhouette of submarines. On the other hand, rudders would be totally useless in so shallow depth: if you have 13m diameter body and 20m water, there’s only 3.5m water between surface/bottom and you! Any little tiny interference or mistakes make you hit the bottom or break surface. Any sober captain won’t drive faster than 5knot there. Why SSBN?
There are areas of Bohai that is deeper than 20m. Nothing stopping them from entering that area occasionally. Unless satellite has been following a submarine from yellow sea, it's not going to just track a submerged entering Bohai sea. It's just not that easy for satellite to intelligently track shipping through large swath of water.

SSK is a different story, their diameter are much smaller, nevertheless they rarely operate in Bohai. For operating in yellow water and ECS, being tracked by chance is not a big deal since SSKs are expendable in nature.
The question here isn't about Bohai. It's about operating depth and detection from above. If it is so easy for detecting by wake, then diesel submarines would constantly be tracked by MPAs from above by wake. As we know, MPAs have to rely on SSK to snorkel to detect by radar. Tracking by wake in crowded sea areas just doesn't make sense to me.

Just ignore lyman, this guy is anything but a reliable resource.
more reliable than you.
I don't even understand the rationale behind SSBN parity simply it is the most crippled leg of Chinese nuclear deterrence and why should China compete with US with the most expensive option in an imaginary nuclear war. Meanwhile spending less than your adversary is the only way to actually win a nuclear war.

Each SSBN is deployed with 12 launcher and every SLBM is able to be tipped with only one 650kt warhead, whereas a single DF-41 can tip 2 or 3 such warheads with a similar survivability. More importantly, the very survivability is a myth since around half of fleets will be in maintenance against a first strike and being destroyed in the shipyard.

A 50% survival rate doesn't make SSBN any better than silo field which maintains a higher survival rate even counterattack AFTER the first inbound warhead explodes on the ground. Arm control ppl acting like there is no middle ground between all destroyed on the ground and counterattack before the first inbound warhead exploding then arguing about the non-existent false conclusion they created on silo launched unsafety.
well you need all 3? Why do you think they developed 092s even though it had no ability to strike any adversary outside of the Siberia? 094 is part of the evolutionary path to a quiet SSBN. Eventually, they will get something that's quiet enough where USN can't track it as soon as it leaves the port and it could be escorted by 095s in the process. They will be able to launch ballistic missiles from the middle of Pacific Ocean and be able to attack from a whole different flight profile. Currently, American BMD is geared toward defending the north pole flight path. if you can put a 096 in the middle of Pacific Ocean with a couple of 095s, then you can get much harder to defend flight path.

There is another factor here which is US military desire to maintain absolute strategic advantage. US navy is likely to blow most of its shipbuilding budget on the Columbia program because Ohio class is getting really old. Having large number of 094s on patrol would push us navy to maintain their 14 boat SSBN fleet. That would just suck up all of US naval budget.
 

SEAD

Junior Member
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There are areas of Bohai that is deeper than 20m. Nothing stopping them from entering that area occasionally.
Hahah, no comment
The question here isn't about Bohai. It's about operating depth and detection from above. If it is so easy for detecting by wake, then diesel submarines would constantly be tracked by MPAs from above by wake. As we know, MPAs have to rely on SSK to snorkel to detect by radar. Tracking by wake in crowded sea areas just doesn't make sense to me.
For wake detection, a MPA is not better (if not worse) than a satellite. I must enhance that constantly tracking is almost impossible but a large scale static map is highly possible.
SSK has much less wake flow because of its slow speed, small volume, low power and the advantage of stopping the whole power system (if SSBNs linger in shallow water, thermal wake will become obvious soon)
more reliable than you.
: D
 
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