China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
650 Too low a number Jeffrey Lewis has constantly low ball the number of Chinese nuclear arsenal for ages It should be double the number around 1200
Only one DF-41 base in the entire country and it's not in Heilongjiang. Press X to doubt.
The US and Russia have space based satellites which will detect a missile launch plume.
They also have either over the horizon or satellite radar to track missiles in the ascent or mid course stage.
So, no, unlike what the article says I think it is quite credible as a defense system against traditional ballistic missiles.
What you could argue is that in a realistic first strike scenario the naval platform might either not be on the missile path or not notified on time.
It will also mean that the US will have to devote a significant part of its fleet in a defensive posture tying ships close to their coast.
The thing is any recent missile design is likely to have some sort of non-ballistic component to it. The article correctly points that out. It does make some mistakes however like claiming an ICBM isn't hypersonic, well it is, at least in the terminal stage it is.
Like I said this is a gigantic waste of money and resources. All prompted by the US leaving the ABM Treaty. At the time the US had Nike-Zeus launchers all over the place and was developing the Sprint missile. It was going to cost them a huge amount of money. The US administration back then (Nixon) correctly decided it was all a gigantic waste of resources since it would just mean the opponent could simply respond by making non-ballistic missiles. A gigantic waste of money as both sides would waste money on anti-ballistic missile defense systems, and less expensive (because you typically need multiple interceptors per each launched missile), but still expensive non-ballistic missiles. For example, the Soviet Union had in the drawing boards a missile called 'Gnom' which was basically an air-augmented rocket.
A missile like that can basically maneuver in the mid-course stages making it much more difficult to intercept. Because it uses the air in the atmosphere as an oxidizer it basically has twice the range so it can expend some in maneuvers and still reach the target.
The other approach is to use a gliding warhead, which is what the Russians are doing with Avangard, this allows you to separate the warhead at a much longer distance to the target and glide all the way to the destination at hypersonic speeds.
The Russians basically have the Tundra (EKS Kupol) satellites to detect missile launches, they have the Voronezh over the horizon radar network to detect them mid-course, and they will have the S-500 or A-235 Nudol to intercept them. The Russians are also helping the Chinese improve their own over the horizon radar network.
They also have either over the horizon or satellite radar to track missiles in the ascent or mid course stage.
So, no, unlike what the article says I think it is quite credible as a defense system against traditional ballistic missiles.
What you could argue is that in a realistic first strike scenario the naval platform might either not be on the missile path or not notified on time.
It will also mean that the US will have to devote a significant part of its fleet in a defensive posture tying ships close to their coast.
The thing is any recent missile design is likely to have some sort of non-ballistic component to it. The article correctly points that out. It does make some mistakes however like claiming an ICBM isn't hypersonic, well it is, at least in the terminal stage it is.
Like I said this is a gigantic waste of money and resources. All prompted by the US leaving the ABM Treaty. At the time the US had Nike-Zeus launchers all over the place and was developing the Sprint missile. It was going to cost them a huge amount of money. The US administration back then (Nixon) correctly decided it was all a gigantic waste of resources since it would just mean the opponent could simply respond by making non-ballistic missiles. A gigantic waste of money as both sides would waste money on anti-ballistic missile defense systems, and less expensive (because you typically need multiple interceptors per each launched missile), but still expensive non-ballistic missiles. For example, the Soviet Union had in the drawing boards a missile called 'Gnom' which was basically an air-augmented rocket.
A missile like that can basically maneuver in the mid-course stages making it much more difficult to intercept. Because it uses the air in the atmosphere as an oxidizer it basically has twice the range so it can expend some in maneuvers and still reach the target.
The other approach is to use a gliding warhead, which is what the Russians are doing with Avangard, this allows you to separate the warhead at a much longer distance to the target and glide all the way to the destination at hypersonic speeds.
The Russians basically have the Tundra (EKS Kupol) satellites to detect missile launches, they have the Voronezh over the horizon radar network to detect them mid-course, and they will have the S-500 or A-235 Nudol to intercept them. The Russians are also helping the Chinese improve their own over the horizon radar network.
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Do you have any proof of those numbers? The numbers given are based on some pretty robust open source analysis that I've been following for a while. Of course, its possible that they missed some, but for number of deployed missiles it sounds about right.
Everything you said explain the entire real time scenario, except these self contradictory part.
If this is a waste of money & resources it can't be a credible system. A credible system is what can be fielded from both technical & financial point of view. If countries had unlimited resources, they could have done anything as they please. They can't.
It's a "credible system" in a per-defined environment even against the threat you have mentioned, traditional non-maneuvering,non-MIRV missile.
Because non-maneuvering,non-MIRV missile is less sophisticated & easy to make. I can easily overwhelm you with sheer numbers.
Entire BMDs is waste of time & as you have mentioned, gigantic waste of money unless you can limit your opponents capability to acquire weapons thereby limiting their offensive capability that can be taken down by you defense.
The odds are overwhelmingly against BMD interceptors becuase they are completely data centric given they have to be extremely ultra precise, thereby very costly,unless you want to arm them with tactical nukes, which again, is another blunder.
It is a giant waste of resources because it will never reliably intercept a first strike from any of the major powers. At least some missiles will go through. And even when it works, in time, the opponents would develop counter-measures. In fact they have been doing so for at least a decade. The Russians started developing them once the ABM Treaty was cancelled by the US. China, even France, have some counter-measures for such systems in already available ballistic missiles. For example one of the changes in the latest French M51 SLBM was decoy warheads. Same deal with the latest variants of the Chinese DF-31 ICBM. Why would you add decoys i.e. dummy warheads if the enemy didn't have missile defense? Plus it's not like you can evacuate a city in the 15 minutes or whatever it takes for a missile to hit its target once it is launched. Then there is the fact Russian and Chinese missile will most likely use a polar route, they aren't going to be launched from the Pacific in most cases. So what are you going to do, send the Arleigh Burke destroyers on patrols across the Northwest Passage? Good luck.
I can kind of understand Japan's arguments for paying for this missile. It might help in a limited scenario where they defend against a North Korean strike. I mean their country is an archipelago and they already have AEGIS destroyers and cruisers. So what the heck. But for the US I think this is a total bust. With regards to North Korea, I think all they need is for someone to slip to them some Zircon missiles and it will make the missile defenses a total bust for Japan too.
All this made was hugely increase spending on missile defense and new more modern ballistic missiles. Something we could all do without. Especially in our present times when the economy is hard hit with this pandemic.
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Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
China never publish their nuclear arsenal those open source are GUESS AT BEST! Most of Chinese arsenal are underground how are they going to see it ! There are at least 2 brigades of DF41 if not 3 brigades by now Just count each brigade consists of between 12 to 16 launcher even using 12 X 3 X let say 5 mirved You already get 180 warhead How about DF31, DF5, etc Somebody did accounting on the number of brigade here in this thread go look it up I am not going to dig it for you
By those extrapolations what's your opinion on how many nuclear warheads China has? Even though US and Russia both have 6,000-6,500 warheads only ~1500 are deployed. If China can keep 800 deployed that should be enough.
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