No country is ever launching Armageddon without getting hit first. Its too risky when you dont know if the strike is indeed nuclear or just conventional. Second strike must come after getting hit with the first strike.
China ICBM/SLBM, nuclear arms thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Silos certainly make sense, and if you don't build them, enemy nuclear bombs will hit your other important facilities, such as cities or transportation hubs.
In the case of silos, the enemy must prioritize the assignment of nuclear bombs to the task of hitting the silos.
Generally speaking, one silo can consume one incoming nuke, much better than letting nuke hit the city and kill tens of thousands of people.
Then the silo fields should have been well dispersed. But the new silo fields in xinjiang are not as dispersed compared to US silo fields. Western analysts have questioned this choice of very closely situated silos which can be taken out with one hit.
And then? Perhaps American silos were built when soviets had multi Megaton warheads while USA has around 500 kt warheads. Also, having silos divert enemy warheads from cities to the silos, thus, damage being received is less. at the end of the day, silos are needed; that's why both Russia and USA retain them. Also, land based leg of the triad is the fastest when it comes to response.
US and Russia have them cause they have a first use policy. China doesn't.
Again, if the goal of the silo is soaking up attacks then put each silo 200 miles apart or even in different regions. Having them in a single field in huge numbers is not a good strategy if the goal is to act as attack sponge.
So, the logical conclusion in my opinion is that China has a hidden first use policy in certain situations.
That strategy leaves you vulnerable to X-ray pindown, however
I don't think you realize the silo's are smaller than the icon they use in PPT slides and are actually 3 km apart
I also don't think you realize nukes don't actually have a blast radius of 200 miles, and that's before we consider the silos are hardened.
Can you go one day without obnoxiously flaunting your ignorance and stupidity on this forum? I'm pretty sure literally everyone else in this thread knows the common sense that silos are spaced far enough apart to prevent more than one being destroyed by a hit except you.
I don't think this kind of personal attack is okay. I have made valid points that I already mentioned were made by western analysts when the silo fields first came into public view.
The fact that Chinese missiles are too much packed compared to US silo fields has been noted in several articles I have seen back then. Analysts have questioned its strategy of a shell game being too vulnerable if these silos are this close.
Again, I don't see why there is attempt at trying to find different excuses for silo based Nuclear weapons other than the main reason they are usually produced, which is to initiate first strike. Producing so many silos and filling them with expensive ICBM just to soak up enemy nuclear attack seems like a big waste of resources.
I should point out that just cause China said that they have a no-first-use policy does not mean they are being honest about it. They can be decieving their enemies into a sense of security by saying we have no-first-use policy.
This huge expansion of silo-based Nukes have been noted by many analysts as perhaps an indication that China could have a first use policy.
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