I agree that China is seeking full scale MAD, which is why I believe they would have developed IC-HGVs as a way of ensuring MAD in case the US decided to pursue a robust BMD capability.
If the US does not pursue a robust BMD capability, then I believe the PLA's procurement of IC-HGV will be of smaller scale and/or may look into additional secondary roles for it.
The counter to the US pursuing a more robust BDM capability is more conventional ICBMs, not IC-HGV.
That is because the economics and physics involved makes an arms race between ICBM and BMD massively favours the ICBMs.
That is the kind of arms race China would gladly get into with the US. And I think this shift in power dynamics is something very few people are grasping. China isn’t afraid to go into direct, head-to-head competition with the US anymore, and will actively push the US into such direct competition where China holds the advantage.
Yes, China holds a trump card in IC-HGV, but when would it play that as its opening hand, before any chips are even on the table; when instead it can keep that back and bait the US into piling more and more chips in first?
I will adapt what I wrote to Zeak, and apply it here:
"What kind of conflict scenarios could the PLA seek to conduct a conventional IC-HGV strike against CONTUS? At what stage of the conflict are they in, what are the losses that each side has already suffered? What is the territories occupied or lost? What is the level of strategic alert each side is at? What are the conventional and nuclear forces that each side has lost or retained at this point?"
You seem to be missing the point that the whole game is to be vague about such things to maximise deterrence.
The only thing China may make clear is that it’s IC-HGVs are not nuclear armed. Beyond that, it will maintain a deliberate policy of strategic ambiguity about precisely what the trigger point for China launching them at CONUS will be.
Personally, I think China will use them if the UA starts to go after civilian infrastructure to dissuade future such attacks. But will not launch even if targets on mainland China are hit, so long as those targets are purely military. However, by not making that clear, there is a decent chance the US military would hold off from even trying to hit purely military targets on mainland China for fear of triggering an escalation that will see critical targets on CONUS hit.
Those are all very baseline questions, and very much unknowns, and I think we are massively overreaching if we think we can model behaviours for those kind of hypothetical scenarios, and use those as a bases for justifying that the IC-HGV system will serve as China's "newest, and as yet, only effective conventional strike option against high value targets on CONUS itself".
You seem to be getting stuck on semantics. It doesn’t matter what the precise trigger point is for China to use such weapons conventionally. The only thing that matters is that China had a credible means of hitting targets on CONUS with such weapons.
A core part of that credibility criteria involves being willing and able to use said weapons, and that is precisely what you loose if you make them nuclear. Since then you are not just choosing to strike at targets on CONUS, you are also crossing the nuclear threshold.
Let me reiterate -- I don't think we can rule out the possibility that the IC-HGVs into the future may have a conventional strike role against CONTUS.
It is indeed something we need to consider.
But we are too far away from the level of strategic deterrence and MAD that China has in service to even start entertaining how each side might react.
China’s new ICBM silo fields will be operational before IC-HGVs
Maybe once the PLA has filled up its new missile silos with CONTUS ranged ICBMs, augmented its TEL ICBM force, and has a robust fleet of survivable SSBNs with CONTUS ranged SLBMs (i.e.: established a sufficient credible level of MAD), then we can start thinking about how the US at the high political and strategic levels of decision making, would react to hypothetical IC-HGV conventional strikes against CONTUS.
However I think it is too early right now.
I must ask then, just when do you think the new silo fields would become operational and when do you think the same for IC-HGVs?
I absolutely believe that China committing to MAD (or at least, significantly enhanced nuclear deterrent capability) is a significant massive paradigm in terms of China's threat assessment and existing strategy.
And the only reason that we can have the ability to talk about MAD, is because of the demonstrated infrastructure and systems that we now have clear evidence of.
I do not believe that level of political and strategic posture is something we could have talked about or entertained prior to having significant evidence of it.
Similarly, I do not think we yet have the evidence or preconditions yet to talk about PLA conventional intercontinental strikes against CONTUS as part of its doctrine. That is a significant change and expansion in its strategy and the geopolitical balance that exists, and I think a significant threshold similarly must be reached before it can be considered as a likely doctrine.
And just how do you expect to get evidence for any of those conditions you set out?
