China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[Broccoli]

The DF-41 is at least 10 tons heavier than the Yars.

RV size and weight matters also.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

RV size and weight matters also.

Your point being?

 

[Broccoli]

It is weird how up to this date the DF-41 has only been tested with 2 MIRV dummy warheads at most, despite capable of carrying more.

Probably don't want to reveal how many it can carry.

Before the last 5kt test back in 1996 China did test three warheads what all had 80-100kt yield, it's ofthen suggests those were low yield tests of the DF-31 500kt warhead (weight 470kg), but few have also speculated those tests involved new compact warhead like W76 or French TN 71/75. Would make sense for China to develop smaller warhead before quitting testing.

 

[Broccoli]

Your point being?

If Chinese warheads are larger & heavier than Russian warheads then DF-41 hauls smaller payload than Yars despite being bigger.

This is of course purely guessing game since we don't have knowledge what kinda warheads Chinese have right now.

 

[Dante80]

If Chinese warheads are larger & heavier than Russian warheads then DF-41 hauls smaller payload than Yars despite being bigger.

This is of course purely guessing game since we don't have knowledge what kinda warheads Chinese have right now.

Wouldn't this make your whole argument a priori moot though? The IF game is a little pointless when played on well hidden qualities.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

If Chinese warheads are larger & heavier than Russian warheads then DF-41 hauls smaller payload than Yars despite being bigger.

How much heavier would they have to be to obviate 10 more tons of fuel mass?

This is of course purely guessing game since we don't have knowledge what kinda warheads Chinese have right now.

That about says it all, doesn't it?

 

[by78]

A PLA Rocket Force underground facility.

 

[by78]

 

[plawolf]

Nobody has responded yet with a feasible way for China to overcome the problems posed by nuclear armed neighbors. We must keep in mind that controlled proliferation among allies is exactly what the USA did during the first Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the current president of the USA was a senator back then. The USA gave Britain nukes and armed many of its allies with nuclear weapons in ways that still go unmentioned to this day. Did anyone here know that the Canadian air force had nuclear air to air rockets provided by the USA? Well they did, and many other European countries has lots of tactical and theater level nukes ready to pop off on short notice. This strategy was a pretty solid deterrent for the USSR.

The main point of proliferating among allies would be to deter China from taking military action against Taiwan. It is all about Taiwan, always has been. Now that China is overhauling its nuclear forces, I firmly believe we will see nuclear east Asia in the near future. So we must contend with the probability that Taiwan will have nuclear forces and/or be in a much tighter alliance with the USA, Japan, Australia, and maybe Korea. They may choose to go with nuclear brinkmanship like they did with the USSR, especially as China continues to develop overwhelming conventional military capabilities. I think this is the most likely outcome if China does not take Taiwan in the very near future.


My point is precisely that China cannot issue this ultimatum if Taiwan has nukes. Especially if Taiwan has enough nukes (and tactical nukes) to respond to Chinese conventional forces with nukes. There is no good solution here that I can think of. People jump to MAD as a conclusion but that is still a failure and a no-win situation. So, how would China deal with a nuclear armed Taiwan?

You are just skipping a whole heap of critical steps needed for anyone to become a nuclear weapons power and just assume that they will be one. Might as well ask what China will do if it’s enemies got time machines.

All of China’s neighbours’ civilian nuclear stockpiles fall firmly and completely with IAEA oversight, with every gram of nuclear material documented and accounted for. The entire point of IAEA is to prevent anyone from turning those civilian stocks into nuclear weapons.

Any attempts to bypass or weaken those IAEA controls and oversight to make the prep work for making nuclear weapons would be impossible to hide. At which point the west’s helpful playbook of counters and escalation from crippling economic sanctions and blockades to direct military kinetic strikes all come onto the table and a simple ultimate will be made before the likes of Japan, SK or Taiwan could achieve nuclear break out - turn over every last gram of nuclear material; full irreversible dismantling of all civilian nuclear infrastructure and space launch industries or China drops a DF through the reactor core of every civilian nuclear power plant in country to dismantle them for you. In the case of Taiwan, it will be full armed unification.

Any transfer of American weapons directly can be easily and completely countered by a mere press release from Beijing that it will consider any use of nuclear weapons by American vassal states as a direct nuclear strike from the US and respond in kind. You will see any American nukes pulled out as faster than the soviets did theirs from Cuba.

 

[Broccoli]

Xi told Biden that China's stockpile is much smaller than United States.

Hopefully that puts end on peoples claims that China has massive arsenal hidden in somewhere.