China ICBM/SLBM, nuclear arms thread

vincent

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
datastack said:
For China - and to some extent Russia as well - the quality of the deterrence matters more than the quantity alone, assuming the quantity is beyond certain threshold. China seems to realize that it was not a good idea to place too many RVs on TELs and have opted to diversify their deterrence by adding those few hundreds of silos, which is a significant investment, the ramification of which is not well perceived outside of ICs.

Why didn't they just add those RVs to DF-41 (or whatever came after) instead of going by the silo approach? was it because 41's capabilities in throw-weight or something else, like survivability?
Why did they place single-tipped DF-31BJ in the silos instead of a silo version of the DF-41?
Why did they produce a single-tipped DF-5C a few years after revealing the MIRV-ed 5B?

Behind closed doors there has to be careful deliberation within China's various bodies governing nuclear doctrines & strategic postures on these matters. Many things would affect the answers to these questions, including but not limited to the following:
- package of RVs currently available to produce besides the good old type 535, and whether the much smaller 575 is a real thing or not;
- technology/facilities available for LOW, which by now is most likely positive given the silos are being filled;
- willingness to participate arms control talks at some stage, and if so which models are likely to be used as chips on the table.
- what are the most threatening launchers the US can deploy against China, and what chips China is willing to offer in exchange to remove that threat. Some believe it is likely some sort of nuclear-tipped MRBM/IRBMs in those island chains, but we'll see.
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You seem to be very confident about the warhead placements on Chinese ICBMs. What is the basis of your confidence?
 
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tamsen_ikard

Captain
Registered Member
G

gpt

Junior Member
Registered Member
CR400BF5033 said:
Ayi said that 1500 is a seriously underestimated figure, and he asked (jokingly) if they (the US) would adjust the figure to 2027 in 2030
My estimation: ~1000 in 2025(now), >2000 in 2030
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They will likely adjust upward.

The 500->1000->1500 number is derived based on a set of assumptions from the 2019-2022 DOD[0], that China:
1) could only build up its nuclear stockpile to ~500 without new fissile material production
2) doesn't have enough production of tritium and plutonium to churn out nukes like USSR and US used to

[0]
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(p. 85)
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
You can probably extract tritium at the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant. CANDU reactors use heavy water as moderator and tritium is generated by neutron capture.
Also from I understand it is possible to make nukes without any plutonium. Will just be less mass efficient.
 
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tamsen_ikard

Captain
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
You can probably extract tritium at the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant. CANDU reactors use heavy water as moderator and tritium is generated by neutron capture.
Also from I understand it is possible to make nukes without any plutonium. Will just be less mass efficient.
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China has one of the largest fleet of nuclear reactors in the world, they have all the plutonium they need coming from those reactors.

China does lack a large Uranium reserve, but they import a lot and can easily make enough weapons grade uranium with a little bit of diversion from the imports.
 
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