China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[Broccoli]

It's also worth mentioning that variants of the DF-4 and DF-21 are thought to be MIRVed as well.

Diameter of the missile put's some limitations on what the missile can haul and DF-21 hasn't all that much to play with. Unless they design new variant same way as Soviets did SS-20 but it has it's own problems.

 

[Equation]

Diameter of the missile put's some limitations on what the missile can haul and DF-21 hasn't all that much to play with. Unless they design new variant same way as Soviets did SS-20 but it has it's own problems.

How do you know for sure if it even had any "limitations" at all? Just because the Soviets failed at one thing doesn't mean the Chinese can succeed at another in a different route.

 

[GreenestGDP]

Diameter of the missile put's some limitations on what the missile can haul and DF-21 hasn't all that much to play with. Unless they design new variant same way as Soviets did SS-20 but it has it's own problems.

Why insert the Soviets comments ?
My guess is ... ...planting some malicious divide and conquer seeds to crack up the alliance between China & Russia

Please do not use Tejas failure as a benchmark to measure other projects.

Tejas project is an utter failure because of the Tejas village is lacking enough supercomputing resources & knowhow.
Intentionally diverting and sacrificing the much needed fund to build the basic toilets that Tejas villagers need is not the answer.

OTOH, at present & for the foreseeable future, China who has ample Supercomputing resources will always be able to miniaturize & optimize their missile & aircraft design

 

[JayBird]

This is a map from stratfor before the revelation of DF-26 Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile. It only shown what DF-21D's estimated range will cover from 1,500km to 3,000 km. But now that range/area could be doubled in size with DF-26. China could potentially hit any ships from it's own boarder to almost half of the world. That's a huge deterrence or threat depending on how you look at it.

 

[plawolf]

Given the unusually fierce determination on the part of most western analysts to dismiss earlier "warnings" throughout the development of the DF21D (no one seemed to have even whispered about the existence of the second gen DF26), I think it has been a huge system shock for them that China has announced the operational deployment of not one, but two AShBM systems.

As such, it may be a while before they work through the full implications of what this means, and even longer to even formulate theoretical counters never mind be able to develop actual fieldable systems.

I doubt they will be able to do much about intercepting the missiles in the short or even medium term, so nothing anyone is developing has much chance of reliably stopping M10 and M20 terminal manoeuvring warheads.

Instead, their focus would be on trying to location and disable China's detection, tracking and targeting systems.

China would have foreseen this, hence its earlier high profit ASAT tests, as a means of establishing a sort of space MAD, whereby both sides have the capability to take out each other's satellites, but the knowledge that to try would result in your own space based assets being so targeted in turn would hopefully deter all from going there.

On the flip side, China is investing massively on UAVs, specifically, the long range, long endurance kinds, which should serve as a serviceable backups in case Space MAD doesn't hold.

 

[kroko]

China has announced the operational deployment of not one, but two AShBM systems.

Thats what chinese state media says. Doesnt mean that its true.

Instead, their focus would be on trying to location and disable China's detection, tracking and targeting systems.

If any country starts doing that, it runs a serious risk of nuclear retaliation. No power will tolerate destroying its strategic weapons eyes.

 

[broadsword]

If any country starts doing that, it runs a serious risk of nuclear retaliation. No power will tolerate destroying its strategic weapons eyes.

I might be ignorant, but has any nuclear power explicitly declared that would be the form of retaliation?

 

[antiterror13]

I might be ignorant, but has any nuclear power explicitly declared that would be the form of retaliation?

Nope. But they could easily change that policy

China also could easily change "no first nuke" policy easily in no time ... for instance ... if somebody managed to destroy three gorges with conventional weapons and the casualties were millions .... do you think China would stick with the policy?

 

[broadsword]

I don't think that policy would be changed if China has a sufficient number of haymakers. So they may be content with a conventional war to wreak the attrition.

 

[plawolf]

Thats what chinese state media says. Doesnt mean that its true.

I feel the denial is strong with this one...

Chinese state media officially announcing it is about as explicit and definitive as one can ever expect China to be on military affairs.

If that isn't good enough for you, nothing will be short of China sinking a carrier with such a missile in a war.

If any country starts doing that, it runs a serious risk of nuclear retaliation. No power will tolerate destroying its strategic weapons eyes.

China has a no first use nuclear policy, where it explicitly states it will only use nuclear weapons as a retaliatory weapon after it has been attacked with nukes first.

That is why it is keen to develop credible deterrence in all other military realms, be it space or cyberspace, so it could effectively deter potential enemies from attacking China in those realms without having to keep going back to threatening the use of nukes.

If anything, threatening nuclear retaliation for non-nuclear first strike attacks is an empty bluff against a fellow member of the nuclear club.

To draw such a line in the sand is to invite others to step over it and make you back down, because no one would be stupid or suicidal enough to follow through with such a threat knowing enemy nuclear retaliation is sure to result if you do.

The only exceptions I can think of are if one side started to systematically target the strategic nuclear forces of another nuclear state with conventional forces, thereby placing said power in an "use them or loose them" dilemma, or if someone launched a conventional attack against civilian targets designed to cause nuclear strike levels of devastation.

Things like bombing damns to unleash devastating floods that kills vast numbers of civilians or striking nuclear power plants to unleash clouds of radiation etc.

Such atrocities would probably force China to reverse its no first use policy, but that is someone pretty much going out of their way into provoking China to do so.