China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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If you were Xi and you knew that you are surrounded by very powerful countries and one of them are super power with very advanced military power and ~10,000 warheads and very aggressive to you. And you are almost as rich/big as that super power .. would you be stupid enough to have just 3% of warhead of that aggressive country? And you have more than enough resources to have much more modern warheads.
So by your logic, China building ICBM, SSBN with many many potential warheads and only have 300 warheads ... I don't think China is that stupid. For your info ... one DF-41 can carry 12 MIRV ... perhaps just for a show?
The MIRV cannot remain empty and useful to send dimsum and sweet & sour General Tso chicken and Wulung teabags and cleaned Laundry, express hypersonic delivery to countries that deserved them.
I feel it too tiresome to keep repeating my earlier posts.
other than just one (but that will lead you to the old posts ) China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
So definately not for show!
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antiterror13
Brigadier
you don't sense the sarcasm, do you?
Reactor grade plutonium can also be used in nuclear weapons. The US conducted tests to confirm this, which is why it's considered a proliferation concern. (source: ) Japan also has uranium enrichment facilities and a still-active (and highly controversial) fast breeder reactor program.
So Japan's available weapons-capable stockpile is already massive and a weapons program can be accelerated very quickly. This has been a concern not just for China (which has officially objected to their stockpile) but also Western nations who are uncomfortable with Japan's insistence on holding on to their reserves. Their potential to go nuclear should not be dismissed.
However, the problem for Japan is the age of its population. It's effectively committing demographic seppuku. You can have all the nukes you want, but they're not going to help you if your population pyramid implodes.
From what I know most of the tracking of the PLARF is done via satellite analysis of the infrastructure and less so counting the TELs.
Sadly I could not find an image depicting a such a large number at once but from an article about the 70th anniversary parade there is an image of supposedly 16 DF-31AGs from 2 brigades so we have a minimum of 8 TELs per brigade. Then again I have no idea how much the usual availability rate for the TELs is and if it is possible to get 12 out of 12 ready for the parade.
But I also have found this from "The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation for the 21st Century"
Apart from this multiple other sources claim that a nuclear arms brigade has anywhere between 6-12 TELs so considering that the article from my original post was posted rougly a month ago it is plausible that there are brigades with 12 TELs even if there might be some with less and that after the enlargement of the PLARF (mostly in IRBMs but still) a good estimate is to assume 12 TELs per ICBM brigade even if you might overshoot a little this way.
Are you the writer of the text on that blog you linked?
Anyway, while It's possible some (or all? or most?) DF31 brigades do feature 12 launchers, I personally believe there's not enough evidence to make such conclusion. While on the other hand, there is a little bit more circumstantial evidence... well, perhaps not evidence but indications to a 8 missile brigade being either the norm or being more common.
One piece of indication would be the parade quote you mentioned, that two brigades made up the detachment of 16 df-31ag missiles.
Other would be that one image of df31 brigade, a CCTV caption, used in the text on the blog you linked, where the crews and launchers of the brigade were shown. And 8 launchers were visible. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean there weren't 4 more off screen, but such shots are somewhat standard, and we had other units with other missiles featured in similar shots - and the norm seems to be to encompass all or most of the missiles in the shot as well. We had the df-26 unit shot with 13+ launchers visible for example.
Third piece of indication would be the FAS texts (by Kristensen, I assume) over the decades where number of df31 units were mentioned and totals of launchers were mentioned - leading to a 8:1 ratio on launchers to units. Usually FAS claimed one df31 unit and 3 df31a units for a total of 32 missiles. And the df-31 numbers (not df-31a) alone were pretty much always claimed to be at 8 or so launchers.
Anyway, to move away from the launchers per unit issue - the blog post that we're talking about also seems to indicate there's no more df-31 missiles at all. Which would, i suppose, indicate that the unit had its hardware replaced with a newer df-31 variant. What exact evidence is there for the assumption that df-31 got retired? Or re-worked into df-31a/ag system missiles? (that's even assuming AG variant uses different missiles from the A variant) In theory, the AG systems could be added on top of previous df-31 systems. Meaning 1 vanilla df31 unit, 3 df31A units and 2 df31AG units. Of course, if AG is replacing older units then that would not apply.
Hi there, blog writer here. I can lay out the evidence as to why MOST DF-31A brigades have twelve launchers.
First thing we can do is look at the infrastructure of each brigade base. DF-31 brigade garrisons are built to a very particular standard. You can spot it if you look at each location. The launcher garages are all long, usually around 25 meter drive-through garages (meaning, the garage is open at both ends). This is the only system in the PLARF that uses this drive-through configuration. Now originally, most of the brigade bases only have a single set of garages for support vehicles and launchers. So the TOE was six launchers, six launch control vehicles, six command vehicles, eighteen cable vans, and eighteen support equipment vans. Over the past five to six years we've been seeing brigade bases build more infrastructure to host more launchers and more support equipment. I've attached before and after shots of Yuxi, a confirmed DF-31A garrison, so you can see what I am talking about. The drive-through garages are the things in the upper right, in the middle of the garages.
Second piece of evidence is the latest numbers from US gov's China Military Power Report 2019. The report gives us the total number of launchers in each range class, so the total number of deployed ICBM launchers is cited to be 90. Because we know the ORBAT for the PLARF, we can break that down based on each brigade. The silo forces are the easiest to count - they have three brigades, each with six silos, so subtract 18 launchers, giving us a remaining total of 72 launchers. All these remaining launchers are DF-31 or DF-31A brigades (the deployment location for the DF-41 is still under construction, and is thus not yet deployed). Because we accurately measure the infrastructure at each brigade base, we can estimate how that breaks down, as the PLARF has exactly 72 places to deploy the DF-31 and its variants. Five of the brigades have twleve launchers, and two have only six, which is why I say that DF-31 brigades USUALLY have twelve launchers.
Finally, we can count brigade numbers my examining where they build the vehicle TELs. I have an article coming up that delves into this in more detail, and I don't want to snipe myself on it on this forum, but basically because the production locations ship completed TELs out in brigade sized batches, we can see a completed brigade set before they deploy, which serves as additional confirmation that brigades have 12 launchers per brigade.
As a note, Hans actually does say in his count that the DF-31 and its variants have six or twelve launchers per brigade, he's just counting less launchers than I am. He counts one DF-31 brigade with six launchers, two DF-31A brigades with twelve launchers, and two more DF-31AG brigades each with twelve launchers, for a total of five brigades. There's some disputes over the two brigades that I'll get into at a later date.
First thing we can do is look at the infrastructure of each brigade base. DF-31 brigade garrisons are built to a very particular standard. You can spot it if you look at each location. The launcher garages are all long, usually around 25 meter drive-through garages (meaning, the garage is open at both ends). This is the only system in the PLARF that uses this drive-through configuration. Now originally, most of the brigade bases only have a single set of garages for support vehicles and launchers. So the TOE was six launchers, six launch control vehicles, six command vehicles, eighteen cable vans, and eighteen support equipment vans. Over the past five to six years we've been seeing brigade bases build more infrastructure to host more launchers and more support equipment. I've attached before and after shots of Yuxi, a confirmed DF-31A garrison, so you can see what I am talking about. The drive-through garages are the things in the upper right, in the middle of the garages.
Second piece of evidence is the latest numbers from US gov's China Military Power Report 2019. The report gives us the total number of launchers in each range class, so the total number of deployed ICBM launchers is cited to be 90. Because we know the ORBAT for the PLARF, we can break that down based on each brigade. The silo forces are the easiest to count - they have three brigades, each with six silos, so subtract 18 launchers, giving us a remaining total of 72 launchers. All these remaining launchers are DF-31 or DF-31A brigades (the deployment location for the DF-41 is still under construction, and is thus not yet deployed). Because we accurately measure the infrastructure at each brigade base, we can estimate how that breaks down, as the PLARF has exactly 72 places to deploy the DF-31 and its variants. Five of the brigades have twleve launchers, and two have only six, which is why I say that DF-31 brigades USUALLY have twelve launchers.
Finally, we can count brigade numbers my examining where they build the vehicle TELs. I have an article coming up that delves into this in more detail, and I don't want to snipe myself on it on this forum, but basically because the production locations ship completed TELs out in brigade sized batches, we can see a completed brigade set before they deploy, which serves as additional confirmation that brigades have 12 launchers per brigade.
As a note, Hans actually does say in his count that the DF-31 and its variants have six or twelve launchers per brigade, he's just counting less launchers than I am. He counts one DF-31 brigade with six launchers, two DF-31A brigades with twelve launchers, and two more DF-31AG brigades each with twelve launchers, for a total of five brigades. There's some disputes over the two brigades that I'll get into at a later date.
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