China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[broadsword]

US' spacing, according to

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These silos are separated by at least three miles, to prevent a single incoming warhead from destroying multiple silos

 

[Richard Santos]

Shocking..Df41 is even shorter than minuteman 3..it's mean less payload and shorter range.. DF41 can carry mirv is also debatable since minuteman 3 only carry 3 warhead. I doubt max range for df41 is 12000km. 14000km range is overexagerated

no, Minuteman is a skinny missile. DF-41 not so much. The range of a missile can be very roughly estimated by how much propellant it has vs how much throw weight is expected of it. A shorter fatter missile can have a lot more propellant per unit throw weight.

If the DF-41 is unusually short for her weight, range snd throw weight, i can immediately think of one very good reason why it might have been designed that way.

Perhaps it is planned to develop the DF-41 into a SLBM? Or if not the whole missile stages from the DF-41 is expected to become part of a new SLBM?

There is a premium on shortness for SLBMs to keep the necessary size and shape of the submarine carrying them under control. To make the whole missile short, each stage is made as short as possible.

 

[Richard Santos]

There's a minimum distance d between any two silos such that no conceivable deliverable nuclear weapon can disable both at the same time by detonating somewhere between them. That distance is probably shorter than three kilometers, but you generally pad things out in engineering just to be safe. Once that minimum distance d is met, it doesn't matter if the silos are 2d, 3d, 4d,..., 1000d apart, there's no added benefit to spacing things out further.

As for the "honey comb shape", that's the most efficient lattice structure that tiles the plane such that the minimum distance constraint between silos is met, i.e., not two silos in the planar lattice are closer than the minimum distance d. This ensures safety while minimizing the operating, maintenance, and construction costs of the silo field.

conversely, the fireball and material thrown up by a nuclear ground blast provide a shield effect against any warhead coming in after the first one. So if silos are packed very close together, the first hit might take out several, but no further hit can be expected on the surviving silos within a izeable area around the first hit for a significant period of time afterwards, providing a window for those missiles to be launched in a second strike.

Having MX missiles based in this way, where 100 missile silos are clustered closely together so ground blast of hit on one of them will protect the rest long enough for them to be launched, was seriously considered by the US in the 1970s.

Look up “Dense Pack”.

however, the dense pack arrangement for MX envision the silos spaces several hundred feet apart, not several miles apart.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Yea, but you have to consider MIRV-ed warheads are going to have an easier time if they are only clustered d apart.

I mean, aren't they just sitting ducks for MIRV-ed warheads given their close proximity to each other? Why not just spread them around farther away?

MIRVing isn't really relevant to the argument for the silo field design. The crux of the argument is that silos are much, much cheaper than missiles/warheads/launch and control crews. Let's take an example where I have 50 ballistic missiles and, to demonstrate why MIRVs are irrelevant, suppose the enemy can instantly teleport his warheads anywhere on my territory. I have two basing options that work out to roughly the same cost (actually, the isolated silos scenario would probably be a lot more expensive, but for the sake of argument):

1. Isolated silos: I can build 50 isolated silos thousands of kilometers apart in the way you want. I can also build a comparable number of decoy silos - but note that these silos will have to look real to enemy spying, so I'll have to dedicate missile brigades, traffic, etc. or else they'll be exposed as fake. The only cost I'm saving in a decoy silo is the cost of the missile, but I'm still accumulating the personnel and activity costs of putting on the show.
2. Silo fields: I can build 5 fields of 100 silos each. I'm digging many more holes in the ground in this scenario, but this is by far the cheapest part of the whole operation. The missile/warhead costs are the same (the same 50 ballistic missiles, 10 to each field), but the personnel costs are drastically lower since instead of 100 independent brigades, I need only 5. Sure, they've got more duties, so each brigade will have to be larger and better resourced, but there's just 5% of the number compared to the "isolated silos". The fixed and operating costs are much, much lower.

Here comes the punchline: How many warheads does my enemy need to commit in each scenario? 100 for the first, 500 for the second. This is for the same 50 missiles. MIRV or no MIRV, he's got to dedicate 5x as many of his warheads because he has to destroy the entire field.

There are additional benefits. I've already mentioned the vastly more streamlined logistics. Another benefit is that the second scenario has much more room for expansion. I can add 100 more missiles to scenario 2 without adding any more infrastructure (physical or logistical), while I'd have to dig 50 more holes and stand up 50 new brigades in scenario 1.

 

[bustead]

I don't know much about nuclear bombs, but I'm pretty sure a big nuke has destructive radius that encompasses 3km.

Plus, if you have MIRV-ed warheads incoming, the close proximity of merely 3KM is like sitting ducks for incoming MIRV-ed warheads.

China's historic strategy has been to maximize survival of silos is to spread them out across a large geographic area as possible, 3KM is so laughably close.

Does China park their mobile DF-31s and DF-41's within 3KM of each other? Of course not..... Then why do the same with a permanent stationary silo?

Warheads will have to be detonated on the surface to destroy a silo (ground bursts). These detonations have a much smaller effective radius than an air burst nuke. For example, a W87 warhead can only destroy hardened silos within 250 meters of the point of detonation, assuming these silos are hardened to withstand 3000 psi overpressure.

So no, nuclear weapons can only destroy silos if they land real close.

 

[hkvaryag]

There is a possibility that they are not silos, but the bases of giant wind turbines. If you use google earth to have a look, you will see a huge wind farm with hundreds of wind turbine a few KM from the sites.

 

[Annihilation98]

no, Minuteman is a skinny missile. DF-41 not so much. The range of a missile can be very roughly estimated by how much propellant it has vs how much throw weight is expected of it. A shorter fatter missile can have a lot more propellant per unit throw weight.

If the DF-41 is unusually short for her weight, range snd throw weight, i can immediately think of one very good reason why it might have been designed that way.

Perhaps it is planned to develop the DF-41 into a SLBM? Or if not the whole missile stages from the DF-41 is expected to become part of a new SLBM?

There is a premium on shortness for SLBMs to keep the necessary size and shape of the submarine carrying them under control. To make the whole missile short, each stage is made as short as possible.

Sorry for my mistake. DF41 is definitely heavier weight more than 60 tons compared to Minuteman III only 36 tons. DF41 probably wider similar to Trident II.

 

[Phead128]

1. Isolated silos: I can build 50 isolated silos thousands of kilometers apart in the way you want. I can also build a comparable number of decoy silos - but note that these silos will have to look real to enemy spying, so I'll have to dedicate missile brigades, traffic, etc. or else they'll be exposed as fake. The only cost I'm saving in a decoy silo is the cost of the missile, but I'm still accumulating the personnel and activity costs of putting on the show.
2. Silo fields: I can build 5 fields of 100 silos each. I'm digging many more holes in the ground in this scenario, but this is by far the cheapest part of the whole operation. The missile/warhead costs are the same (the same 50 ballistic missiles, 10 to each field), but the personnel costs are drastically lower since instead of 100 independent brigades, I need only 5. Sure, they've got more duties, so each brigade will have to be larger and better resourced, but there's just 5% of the number compared to the "isolated silos". The fixed and operating costs are much, much lower.

I agree that personell costs are lower if in a clustered silo design, but can you clarify about this issue about missile/warhead cost...

Can you clarify, you are comparing 50 isolated silos versus 500 clustered silos, and you are saying the overall cost (including missile/warhead cost, personnel cost, logistic cost) is cheaper for 500 clustered silos compared to 50 isolated silos?

But I think missile/warhead costs is significantly higher in 500 clustered silos compared to 50 isolated silos, by virtue of 10X difference in total missile/warheads to populate in silos.... the missile/warhead cost is not equal in isolated and clustered silos.

I mean, each missile cost tens of millions of dollars right? You have 10X more in clustered, that likely outweights any cost-savings from personell/logistics efficiency... though in the super-long-term, you might break-even.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

The missile costs are the same because there are 50 ballistic missiles in each scenario. I'm saying the overhead of maintaining 100 isolated silos is greater than 5 fields of 100 silos each. In scenario 1 there are 50 live and 50 decoy silos, while in scenario 2 there are 50 live and 450 decoy silos. The point of this is that the enemy doesn't know which silos are live and which aren't, so he has to hit everything. In scenario 2 he has to use 500 warheads, while in 1 only 100.

 

[Broccoli]

I was looking at Everets latest tweets and they are speculating that PLARF could be building additional DF-5 silos what would go with rumors about it's new version or completely new heavy ICBM 'ala Sarmar.