Thanks to many contributors things are becoming more reliable in an ongoing process.
I want to add my own recent overview.
The bold entries seems to be confirmed and regarding the type of weapon either confirmed by photo or sat image evidence.
Corrections are welcomed!
The fact that table presents such a wide range of numbers floors me. Out of active, front line units, your list shows 18 brigades that have photographic confirmation of their missile types, and thus their existence. In addition to that, you list 16 more brigades with alleged missile types, but no confirmation. I assume those are units which are mentioned in rumors or newsbits?
And then on top of those, you list further 6 brigades which allegedly exist, as they have a number, but one doesn't even know what missiles they use. Even though for most of them there are also coordinates available. How does one even then know that it's a missile brigade there, if there are no missiles to be seen?
And on top of all that, there's the 67th Base, which basically doesn't have a single known front line missile unit. How do we know that Base even exists and functions? And if it does function, wouldn't that mean that at least 6 more brigades are out there, somewhere, as part of it?
And what are the chances there are further brigades in some Base units or even further whole Bases which we don't know about?
Out of just the brigades with the known or alleged missile types - the list suggests PLA already has or is transitioning to :
3 df11 brigades
2 df15 brigades
3 df16 brigades
1 df17 brigade
2 df10 brigades
7 df21 brigades
5 df26 brigades
7 df31 brigades
3 df5 brigades
2 df41 brigades
But there's also the 6 brigades listed as known, without any missile types known. And the whole 67th Base without a single known brigade. Which might quite plausibly lead to 12 more brigades, in existence, in total. So on top of these 35 "known" brigades, there may be 12 more.
There's almost as much as what we don't know about china's PLARF than it is what we do know.
The low numbers of known df-10 units are also quite suspicious to me. Cruise missiles could very plausibly be fielded in much larger quantities. Also, with so many brigades getting new missiles, it's also plausible the older types may not all be retired but simply handed over to other units. So a lot of the unknown/unconfirmed units may be sporting cruise missiles and/or df-11/df-15.
The 2019 DoD report to US congress estimated roughly 90 ICBMs, 980 to 2110 other ballistic missiles and up to 540 ground launched cruise missiles.
The list of the brigades and missile types from the table, assuming there's 12-18 BM launchers for each non nuclear brigade, and then using same multiplier of launchers to missiles that DoD report used (x1 to x2 for IRBM, x3 to x6 forSRBM and x1 to x3 for MRBM) one can get the following:
54 df11 launchers with 165-330 missiles
36 df15 launchers with 105-210 missiles
36-54 df16 launchers with 110-325 missiles
12-18 df17 launchers with 12-54 missiles
18 (?) df10 launchers with 54-108 missiles
84-126 df21 launchers with 85-380 missiles
90 df26 launchers with 90-160 missiles
56 df31 launchers with 56 missiles
18 df5 launchers with 18 missiles
16 df41 launchers with 16 missiles
The ICBM count actually very precisely matches the DoD report figure.
The IRBMs are also very close, ahead by just a little compared to DoD report.
MRBMs are close, though slightly behind the DoD report. (df21 and df17 assumed here)
and SRBMs are quite a bit behind the DoD report figure, almost by half.
Of course, if we add those 12 brigades that may exist but we simply don't know about them, and lets say split their belongings between older SRBMs and cruise missiles - then the SRBM count goes very close to DoD report estimate as well. And DF10 count goes up, though still lagging behind DoD report figure by more than a half.
I wonder what Sean O'Connor says about the table you've assembled, as well as DoD report numbers. I remember he once said he was working on a piece on PLARF, so he might have some insight as well.
