China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

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kroko

Senior Member
This seems to be the new DF-21C (or DF-25) TEL. Its 12x12.

Strange. That is the third 6 axis TEL i have seen in recent times, all of them different, this one more diferent than the other two (one of them has already been posted on this forum, the other one i saw in MPnet photos thread.)

The cannister doesnt seem to be DF-21/25, but rather DF-31 or shortened DF-31.

I wonder what the PLA is up to.
 

Broccoli

Senior Member
Here is some old rumors about the DF-25.

The land-based mobile-launch DF-25 is a a two-stage solid-fuel missile with a range of 1,700 kilometers. While the ranges of DF-25 and DF-21 are approximately the same, the nuclear-tipped DF-21 has a throw-weight of 600kg, compared to the conventionally armed DF-25's 2,000kg. The DF-25 is derived by removing the third stage from the three-stage DF-31 and substituting a modified second stage. Potential missions of the DF-25 include providing rapid fire support over long distances to defend the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.
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Broccoli

Senior Member
Joe Cirincione gives quite an bleak assessment of US missile defence. If he's correct then Chinese minimum deterrence policy is not in any danger and single warhead DF-31 series missiles with advanced penaids should provide good enough deterrence.
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Looking the new DF-31 TEL it's likely that Chinese deterrence is becoming better all the time, but in different forums quite many people are still hooked on MIRVs and see them best way to deter any possible enemy, or even give a better first strike capability like some of the ultranationalist like to fantasize.


Any idea why so many are hooked on MIRV in year 2013? Henry Kissinger himself did admit that deploying MIRVs was a mistake.
I would say in retrospect that I wish I had thought through the implications of a MIRVed world more thoughtfully in 1969 and 1970 than I did.

In retrospect, I think if one could have avoided the development of MIRVs, which means also the testing of MIRVs by the Soviets, we would both be better off.]
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ahadicow

Junior Member
well, if it's Henry Kissinger talking, there are alot of things he should have "thought through" and "avoided", the least of which are " the implications of a MIRVed world".

The whole idea of Nuclear Deterance is stupid. Whoever is going to make the decision to trigger a nuclear war is going to be a political/military leader of a world power. It is a given that such person is exempt from the consequence of nuclear war. The "mutally assured annhilation" in actuallity means "the mutally-agreed slaughtering of civilians among world leaders". If I know anything about the sort of personalies that make up those "leaders", I'd conclude they have a common tendency to make a sacrfice of their people.
 
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escobar

Brigadier
2nd Arty driver exam...

[video=youtube;ihL6jvlApSA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihL6jvlApSA#t=0s[/video]

underground great wall ongoing construction

[video=youtube;jVIW40v0k1Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVIW40v0k1Y#t=0s[/video]
 

escobar

Brigadier
2nd arty psychological training...

[video=youtube;HSqJfh1mot8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSqJfh1mot8#t=0s[/video]
 

escobar

Brigadier
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As a young Soviet military officer, Viktor Esin was stationed in Cuba during the October 1962 crisis, where he had release authority over a nuclear-tipped missile targeting New York. On his first visit to Manhattan in December, I made sure to thank him for not obliterating our city.

Gen. Esin rose to become chief of staff for the Strategic Rocket Forces, and he is now a professor at the Russian Academy of Military Science. So what's been on his mind lately? Mainly the stealthy rise of China to a position of nuclear parity with the U.S. and Russia. "All in all, they may have 850 warheads ready to launch," he says. "Other warheads are kept in storage and intended to be employed in an emergency." He estimates the total size of the Chinese arsenal at between 1,600 and 1,800 warheads.

That is something to bear in mind as the Obama administration seeks to slash the U.S. arsenal to about 1,000 strategic warheads. That would be well below the ceiling of 1,550 warheads stipulated by the 2010 New Start Treaty. The administration also wants to spend less than the $80 billion it promised on modernizing America's rusting nuclear-weapons infrastructure.

On the strength of that promise 13 Republican senators gave President Obama the votes he needed to ratify New Start. Suckers! Now the president means to dispense with the Senate altogether, either by imposing the cuts unilaterally or by means of an informal agreement with Vladimir Putin. This is what Mr. Obama meant in telling Dmitry Medvedev last year that he would have "more flexibility" after re-election.

But what, you ask, is so frightening about having "only" 1,000 nuclear weapons? Surely that is more than enough to turn any conceivable adversary Paleolithic. Won't we remain more or less at parity with the Russians, and far ahead of everyone else?

It all depends on China. It is an article of faith among the arms-control community that Beijing subscribes to a theory of "minimum means of reprisal" and has long kept its arsenal more or less flat in the range of 240-400 warheads. Yet that is a speculative, dated and unverified figure, and China has spent the last decade embarked on a massive military buildup. Isn't it just possible that Beijing has been building up its nuclear forces, too?

When I broached this theory in an October 2011 column—noting that the U.S. had, in fact, underestimated the size of the Soviet arsenal by a factor of two at the end of the Cold War—I was attacked for being needlessly alarmist. But one man who shares that alarm is Gen. Esin. In July 2012, he notes, the Chinese tested an intermediate-range DF-25 missile, which Russia carefully tracked.

"In the final stage the missile had three shifts in trajectory, dropping one [warhead] at each shift," he notes. "It's solid evidence of a MIRV [multiple warhead] test." A month later, the Chinese launched a new long-range, MIRV-capable missile, this time from a submarine...
 
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