antiterror13
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What about India ?
China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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What about India ?
There is a poster here who is advocating that China should have less than 1000 warheads. He posted a few times saying it makes economic sense. And the other convulted geopolitical conspiracy theory on why it makes sense. He asserts that 1000 warhead is a fantasy number. He is happy to promote a conspiracy theory that the Chinese intelligence agency would kill people for saying that there is 1000 nuclear warheads.
First of all, the figure of 1000 nuclear warheads have been quoted by the Global Times, Chinamil, CGTN, and other Chinese defence analysts. There is no conspiracy. The GT is the defacto mouthpiece of the CPC. When they announce something there, it usually happens. Take the HK national security bill for example. Another great example is It was announced on GT months before it went into effect. GT also quoted correctly about some PLA casualties during the Galwan clash with India, 8 months before the official confirmation by China. Even the western media takes the GT's words seriously.
The argument to expand China's arsenal to 1000 warheads has been intensely debated. We would not go there again. Besides, as a GT opinion piece said, 1000 warheads is a milestone, not the final destination. It seems that China is setting itself up to go further, but it does not want to mention how far for now.
This poster has many times in the past posted many conspiracy theories about China. Through these convoluted conspiracy theories, he positions that China's strategic weaknesses, are actually 'advantages'. So this lack of nuclear warheads being a 'good thing' theory is yet another one from him. He likes to dismiss other people's opinions as childish, moronic, and baseless. Well, this is the same fella who felt the need to admire the fashion of Qing dynasty sailors on the doomed Chinese battleships during the first Sino-Japanese War; on the Type 055 thread. Why? I guess I've seen enough crap from this poster to come to a conclusion that he loves a weak China. I don't need to name him. You would know who this fella is.
First of all, the figure of 1000 nuclear warheads have been quoted by the Global Times, Chinamil, CGTN, and other Chinese defence analysts. There is no conspiracy. The GT is the defacto mouthpiece of the CPC. When they announce something there, it usually happens. Take the HK national security bill for example. Another great example is It was announced on GT months before it went into effect. GT also quoted correctly about some PLA casualties during the Galwan clash with India, 8 months before the official confirmation by China. Even the western media takes the GT's words seriously.
The argument to expand China's arsenal to 1000 warheads has been intensely debated. We would not go there again. Besides, as a GT opinion piece said, 1000 warheads is a milestone, not the final destination. It seems that China is setting itself up to go further, but it does not want to mention how far for now.
This poster has many times in the past posted many conspiracy theories about China. Through these convoluted conspiracy theories, he positions that China's strategic weaknesses, are actually 'advantages'. So this lack of nuclear warheads being a 'good thing' theory is yet another one from him. He likes to dismiss other people's opinions as childish, moronic, and baseless. Well, this is the same fella who felt the need to admire the fashion of Qing dynasty sailors on the doomed Chinese battleships during the first Sino-Japanese War; on the Type 055 thread. Why? I guess I've seen enough crap from this poster to come to a conclusion that he loves a weak China. I don't need to name him. You would know who this fella is.
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I read an year ago that India had a new nuclear weapons facility being constructed somewhere in the country. I remember checking the maps too. Don't know the names or place now (and couldn't even find them on the map). It's somewhere in Central India.
I also read about Indian decisions to put its missiles in North East India ( South Tibet / arunachal pradesh). It's because it's the closest to Chinese major cities. I guess it will be in silos there.
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According to a recent Guanqiyouyu episode. China is involved in arms control talks with the US and Russia. But the Chinese focus is only on non-proliferation. China refuses to discuss anything regarding arms reduction or technology control. If this information is reliable, it means China is confident of its negotiating position and is working to increase both the quantity and quality of its strategic deterrence.
It has nothing to do with confidence, it has to do with necessity. By necessity China can’t enter into a treaty which codifies its vast inferiority in nuclear arms.
the US have 100% silo based ICBM force simply because it inherited such a large force of from the cold war that for much of the post cold war period it had far more than enough to survive any plausible first strike and still deliver an massive unanswerable second strike using just its silo based ICBM force.
In addition, the social structure of the US makes it more challenging to adopt any land based nuclear force in its own territory that has a large foot print which overlaps with potentially a wide range of civilian properties and interests. Anti-nuclear sentiment in the US is alway latent and politically far more powerful than any such force can ever be in a single party state.
Sure they inherited it from the cold war but even during the cold war, the US land based missile force was 100% silo based was it not? Cold war wasn't the reason for the 100% silo ICBM force.
I'd hazard a guess that the US had the $$$ means to go big (in numbers) and therefore could afford to go 100% silo in the confidence that enough will survive for even 2nd strike MAD.
Mobile launchers are more the domain of those that don't have the money for numbers and therefore have to play shell games with their limited launchers.
Silos lower the wear and tear on your ICBMs which makes your rocket force cheaper in the long run to maintain. Mobile launchers, especially, if they regularly get trundled around, have shorter and more expensive lifespans.
The big problem with liquid fuel, whether silo based or mobile, is the inability to keep them in a ready state. It takes time to fuel them up and get them ready. Which means added vulnerability to first strikes. This ultimately led to the demise of liquid fueled missiles that are response time constrained.
The primary american second strike capability during and after the Cold War was based in SSBNs. The large silo based minutemen ICBM force were seen during the 1960s and early 1970s as an better precision first strike weapon because silos can be precision surveyed to ensure the ICBM is launched from a precisely known coordinate and therefore hit a precise target. In the late 1970s GPS and precision gyros had allowed mobile missiles to come close to silo launched missiles in precision. The US therefore embarked on several road mobile ICBM projects, including the MX missile, and the Midgetmen missile, which were intended to replace the 1960 vintage minutemen.
But ultimately, a highly survivable land based second strike force is not absolutely essential to the US, because US second strike capability was primarily sea based and the US held a substantial ASW superiority. Mobile ICBMs on American territory also met with fierce political resistance, because it is rightly seen as likely to increase civilian and casualty of any soviet first strike because instead of hitting fixed American silos, mobile launchers conjured up images of Soviet ballistic missiles raining down on the American highway network and population centers trying to hit the mobile launchers. So the US gave up on mobile land based ICBMs, and deployed the MX missile in silos even though it was designed to be mobile.
They absolute key is during the Cold War, the US had a sufficient and survivable second strike force based at sea. That;s why it can afford to leave its land based ICBMs in fixed silos. Really, the US could have gotten rid of its entire land based ICBM force all together. If it had done that America will be safer because there will be fewer target for the soviets to hit in continental USA. But politically that would seem like a major unilateral disarmament, and the conservatives would never allow it.
But ultimately, a highly survivable land based second strike force is not absolutely essential to the US, because US second strike capability was primarily sea based and the US held a substantial ASW superiority. Mobile ICBMs on American territory also met with fierce political resistance, because it is rightly seen as likely to increase civilian and casualty of any soviet first strike because instead of hitting fixed American silos, mobile launchers conjured up images of Soviet ballistic missiles raining down on the American highway network and population centers trying to hit the mobile launchers. So the US gave up on mobile land based ICBMs, and deployed the MX missile in silos even though it was designed to be mobile.
They absolute key is during the Cold War, the US had a sufficient and survivable second strike force based at sea. That;s why it can afford to leave its land based ICBMs in fixed silos. Really, the US could have gotten rid of its entire land based ICBM force all together. If it had done that America will be safer because there will be fewer target for the soviets to hit in continental USA. But politically that would seem like a major unilateral disarmament, and the conservatives would never allow it.
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There are liquid fueled ICBMs that can be stored fully fueled and ready to launch. In fact the reason why all chinese space launchers before the LM-5 used highly toxic fuels was precisely because they all descended from liquid fueled ICBMs that required its fuel to be storable. Clean liquid rocket fuels are cryogenic and can;t be stored for a long time. But even storable liquid fueled ICBMs can not travel cross country horizontally on TELs while fully fueled. If they are fired from TELs, they need to be fueled after being stood upright. If they must be fired on demand with no preparation, they need to be stored upright, ie, in silos.
I would also like to add: silos are targets that the opponent would want to dedicate warheads to to destroy them for obvious reasons. Silo doors can be hardened in such a way and silos themselves can be spaced such that fields of silos must be individually destroyed by landing a nuke each on top of the silo. The spacing can even mean you can't destroy a group of silo with a single MIRV'd missile because the gaps between each silo is too close for different warheads of the same missile to land accurately without interfering with each other as they detonate, yet also far enough apart that you can't destroy two silos with a single warheads by landing between them.
Add on top of of this silos can be decoyed by digging shallow pits and then building a real silo door on top. Each warhead the silo attracts is one less warhead headed to your cities.
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