China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[Orthan]

succesfully use UAV to act as mini Baidu

Can an UAV replace a navegation satellite constelation? perhabs, but the link you provided doesnt specifically talk about beidou, only satellite comunications in general.

we don't see concrete pad on recent exercise

There is no need for a concrete pad in order to design a pre-launch site.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

Can an UAV replace a navegation satellite constelation? perhabs, but the link you provided doesnt specifically talk about beidou, only satellite comunications in general.



There is no need for a concrete pad in order to design a pre-launch site.

With communication you can transmitt the location of the launcher using reference of UAV with laser gyro it will fix its location to a reference point (base) which is not far away so the error is very small!
Inertial guidance system is used in ballistic missile with accuracy of 50-100m over 10000 km

 

[Anlsvrthng]

With communication you can transmitt the location of the launcher using reference of UAV with laser gyro it will fix its location to a reference point (base) which is not far away so the error is very small!
Inertial guidance system is used in ballistic missile with accuracy of 50-100m over 10000 km

Can we stop it here ?

 

[Orthan]

the ICBM has a heavy canister, with thick wall, for transportation / storage. On the Topol the canister is only a thin wall environmental protector, and the missile loaded independently , on the DF41 it is a heavy thick wall carrier / lifting frame.

The question is why did the chinese go for this option? do they lack the technology to develop a cannister capable of renewable launch? or is it something else?

 

[gelgoog]

...
He's entire argument is basically built on the premise that China could not possibly achieve the claimed range and warhead count in the DF-41 using China's supposed level of solid fuel technology. But where is the information on where China's solid fuel technology is at? I personally was under the impression China's fuel technology isn't in the 1980s Soviet level. Could be wrong but perhaps there are some who actually have a better clue and can weigh in. This argument of his is built on the assumption that because China accessed Ukrainian and Russian AKA Soviet rocket fuel technologies from over 2 decades ago, it is exactly still where it is then.

Placing DF-41 near Russian borders? Again how would he know where all DF-41 positions are? Perhaps there was news of some DF-41 being nearer to Russia. That's to be expected though? DF-26 and DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles are also placed near Russian border because all these BMs have range enough to still reach their intended targets while hiding well away from the coast.

As for the warhead count, that's definitely a closely guarded secret but he doesn't know the dimensions, geometry, and weight of the warheads carried. Why can't there be 10 to 14 warheads? What if they're smaller sized and smaller yield warheads? China uses a different device configuration to the rest of the world (Yu Min vs Teller-Ulam). The disclosed Chinese warheads of the past were mostly air drop versions and there was the alleged acquisition of two US warhead designs. Miniaturisation is nowhere near out of the question. It's pretty much assumed for the turn of the century, let along nearly 20 years later.
...

To the best knowledge we have available, Chinese solid propellant technology should be among the best in the world, if not the best period.
As an example China has the ability to manufacture CL-20 which is one of the most advanced explosives available today.

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An explosive like octanitrocubane should be even better but no one is presently able to manufacture such explosives in mass quantities to use in solid rockets.

It is unknown if China uses carbon composites in the outer casing of their ballistic missiles or not. This could have implications since if the missile was lighter it could have more range and payload. But a lot of existing missile systems don't feature this either. It is mainly a feature of missiles developed in the late 1990s which entered service in the 2000s like the M51 SLBM. But if a country like Iran can use this technology today I expect China not to be too far behind either.

There is a concern with regards to how far China can miniaturize its nuclear warheads or produce nuclear fuel. But we know China has the computational facilities to aid with designing nuclear warheads (just look at the Top500 list), they have uranium centrifuge technology. China has highly advanced nuclear reactor technology maybe 2nd only to Russia including things like 4th generation fast reactors.

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So they have the means to produce and likely develop better nuclear warheads. Only thing I can think of which might be of help and I haven't heard the Chinese of having is ICF (Innertial Confinement Fusion) facilities to validate physical models for fusion bombs without actual tests.

With regards to placing the road mobile ICBMs on the North of China well that makes a lot of sense. You can just launch the missiles over the North Pole and you can hit not only targets in Russia, you can hit the entire continental United States. What did you expect, for them to launch the missiles to the US over the Pacific Ocean?

 

[ougoah]

It seems that according to the article´s author, the DF-41 complex replaces the spent cannister using a crane. That creates a need for a thick cannister, and it is an inferior process compared with the soviet/russians, which use a "container", and dont require such a heavy cannister.



This makes the DF-41 complex technically inferior to the russian ones. It also in a large sense, negates the all-terrain advantage of the mobility of the complex (being able to launch anywhere) and makes it dependant on tunnel systems, which have their own vulnerabilities, specially if conflict has already started some time prior to the launch.

I think the top paragraph holds some merit as a criticism of the DF-41. The gyroscope point is false I think because there are other ways to achieve this. Do SLBMs also use the Soviet approach? I'm confident the absence of a similar gyroscope box in the same position as Russian ones does not mean the DF-41 lacks ability to launch from wherever it wants. But I'm no expert here. I'm just pretty sure there are multiple ways to achieve this rather rudimentary quality. Would be very surprised if even the DF-31 cannot launch from wherever it wants to.

ICBM tunnels don't say anything about this because ICBM tunnels offer their own set of advantages that make them extremely useful tactically. Some people are really jumping to ridiculous conclusions with this stuff. Absence of an exact replica gyroscope box means it doesn't exist and it hasn't got random position launch capability? And the ICBM tunnel programs confirm this? Yeah ... no.

Knocking out Chinese satellites to prevent guidance? We don't know if Chinese solutions to the pre-launch adjustments and recalibrations for inertial guidance uses a different method to the Russian one which is visually identifiable. Perhaps the Chinese one is very similar just less visually obvious from looking at photographs? This is already assuming there are no other ways apart from this pre-launch gyro and GPS assisted guidance.

 

[ougoah]

The question is why did the chinese go for this option? do they lack the technology to develop a cannister capable of renewable launch? or is it something else?

This is a genuinely interesting question. I suspect the Chinese approach offers better results and because they do not have that many missiles and warheads compared to the Soviets and Russians, there was less purpose to go down that path i.e. they believe there will be no time or point to reload these ICBMs if and when they are fired en masse.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

This is a genuinely interesting question. I suspect the Chinese approach offers better results and because they do not have that many missiles and warheads compared to the Soviets and Russians, there was less purpose to go down that path i.e. they believe there will be no time or point to reload these ICBMs if and when they are fired en masse.

It's not an interesting question because it's based on the false premise that the ridiculous article the troll @Orthan posted has anything to do with reality. This is like discussing the merits of the idea that the moon is made of green cheese because a troll posted an article by a know-nothing which made that claim.

 

[Anlsvrthng]

It's not an interesting question because it's based on the false premise that the ridiculous article the troll @Orthan posted has anything to do with reality. This is like discussing the merits of the idea that the moon is made of green cheese because a troll posted an article by a know-nothing which made that claim.

The article contain valid and easy to check information, and simple robust logical chain.

Attacking the source doesn't invalidate the observable facts and the logical chain. For that you have to came up with alternative theories/observations. Like where is the positioning GPS antenna on the launch canister.

 

[gelgoog]

AFAIK the Chinese typically have at least one extra reload missile per missile tube in their brigades.
So the idea the thing is disposable seems bunk to me.
In fact a lot of what is said in the article seems like nonsense. Sure you need to know the coordinates of the launch site to compute a flight trajectory but there are more modern ways to do that than to use mechanical gyroscopes and inertial navigation. Heck, you can just use Beidou or even input the coordinates manually if need be. For all we know the transport truck might have a navigation system with builtin compact stellar and inertial navigation on it, much like a tank, and just communicates the launch site coordinates to the missile by wire or radio.