China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[bustead]

I don’t think US politicians care about 3M lives once they would have decided to begin a nuclear war. 300M is enough, perhaps.

Well there is a reason why China has road-mobile ICBMs.

Also, the US DoD assumes that their warheads have a reliability rate of 80% during the Cold War. Assuming that they are right about their own warheads and that they will deliver 2 warheads against 1 silo, there is a 4% chance for each target silo to survive. Thus, in the 300 silos that came under attack, we can expect 12 silos to survive and retaliate. By launching ground-burst warheads and targeting cities near agricultural centers, China can contaminate American farmlands to cause a famine over the next few years.

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They can claim they’re OBS. US nuclear doctrine doesn’t tend to fight back immediately once the alert is triggered.

In your proposed case, the US launches a first strike with bombers. This suggests that the US is already willing to use nuclear weapons first. In this case, the decision to launch nuclear missiles against China has already been made. Any additional attacks are only follow-up strikes instead of a whole new political decision. In fact, I think in your case it is implied that the American leaders are expecting (or even willing to accept) a Chinese nuclear retaliation. By launching OBS, China is not gaining significant strategic advantages. The intention to retaliate is clear regardless of what system has been deployed. There is no additional advantages offered by OBS (compared to FOBS in this case anyway).

300 missiles are enough to beat BMD even without any special design.

In that case there will be no need to rely on OBS as well. Just build more warheads and missiles.

 

[Kalec]

Are you sure that those silo are harden enough? For me the satellite images didn’t show such features. B-2 and B-21 can reach them by refueling in Indian Ocean and B61-11/12 can definitely destroy them.

I believe B61 is only for show of strength, similarly to what Russia is doing in Baltic today. It wouldn't scare a superpower with credible second strike capability. At the end of day, B61 is only a gravity bomb even if it is guided.

It is impossible to hit all 350 silos in 5 minutes without notice. EVEN IF it does, a second strike capability means that US still can't win a nuclear war by disarming silos. 350 B-61s need about 20-30 B-2s, flying over pacific or mid-east then deep inland Chinese mainland, at a point there is no turning back.

Let's say US president ordered 30 B-2 bombers with nuclear bombs on board to fly into Chinese mainland, with mission to destroy silos.

1. Then he pressed the button. Extreme shocking on Chinese side, who also presses the button five minutes later after verification. Launching all remaining silo missiles, submarine missiles and nuclear ALBMs. Nuclear war begins, no one wins.

2. He didn't press the button, but at this point there is no turning back as Chinese may shoot down your bombers with nuclear bombs on board while deep inside Chinese territory.

Either you get a nuclear war or the biggest diplomatic scandal ever existed.

 

[SEAD]

Well there is a reason why China has road-mobile ICBMs.

Also, the US DoD assumes that their warheads have a reliability rate of 80% during the Cold War. Assuming that they are right about their own warheads and that they will deliver 2 warheads against 1 silo, there is a 4% chance for each target silo to survive. Thus, in the 300 silos that came under attack, we can expect 12 silos to survive and retaliate. By launching ground-burst warheads and targeting cities near agricultural centers, China can contaminate American farmlands to cause a famine over the next few years.

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In your proposed case, the US launches a first strike with bombers. This suggests that the US is already willing to use nuclear weapons first. In this case, the decision to launch nuclear missiles against China has already been made. Any additional attacks are only follow-up strikes instead of a whole new political decision. In fact, I think in your case it is implied that the American leaders are expecting (or even willing to accept) a Chinese nuclear retaliation. By launching OBS, China is not gaining significant strategic advantages. The intention to retaliate is clear regardless of what system has been deployed. There is no additional advantages offered by OBS (compared to FOBS in this case anyway).

In that case there will be no need to rely on OBS as well. Just build more warheads and missiles.

Great criticism. For me the main advantage of OBS is that it avoids false alarm so Launch-on-warning(LoW) can reliably work. You know neither US nor CCCP actually run LoW doctrines, mainly because of the pressure of decision making. LoW is necessary for China especially considering their TELs and SSBNs are not enough for second strike, but not necessary for US/CCCP. At the same time, without the fear of false alarm triggered war, China can deploy a fully automatic launching system with short range alarm(which should be effective for stealthy targets)and that would ban any B21/LRSO first strike.

 

[bustead]

I have explained why it’s not a good situation: fake targets can be thousands and you need enough time to make the huge decision about nuclear attack.

And how are you going to jam them? For example, the silo field in Hami is closer to Mongolia than India. So to get there you will need to fly over Russia and Mongolia, or India itself. Remember, ECM planes are not stealthy and will have to be aerial refueled. Such a complicated operation is impossible to hide.

Dropping decoys from B-2/B-21 is also unrealistic. Not only do you have to penetrate really deep into Chinese IADS, you will be risking interception by patrolling planes. In this case, there is no need for radars. A plane with EOTS will be able to detect stealth bombers from 50-70 km away. Also, keep in mind that it is very expensive to fly a stealth bomber.

Finally, what if one of the planes suffer from mechanical failure and crashes in China? What kind of diplomatic incident will that be?

For a country like China or US, it’s not a difficult task to reload all silos in, for example, 2 years.

What about the inactive warheads in orbit? It is impossible to recover them. Do you let them crash? Do you de-orbit them and risk detonation? What about the Pu-239 onboard? What if there is a radioactive leak?

Your idea calls for your entire silo-based stockpile every 2 years. My idea calls for maintaining the stockpile for 50 years. Which one do you think is cheaper and more reliable?

Finally, why would you need a silo to launch anything to orbit? If you are building a nuclear deterrent in orbit, that means you are doing so in peacetime. Why not just grab a long march 5 and load hundreds of warheads onboard? There is no point in using military missiles when civilian rockets are cheaper and better for the job.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

At least DF-5 has enough capacity, I don’t think silo based DF-41 would be weaker than that. They even have a rocket for KZ-21 which is a big one(4.5m diameter).

I think silos+early warning also facing this problem.

China has neither good enough sea area nor enough ASuW capability to protect their SSBN. I also wonder why they don’t build much more TELs, perhaps they are not satisfied with the slow reaction speed caused by deep tunnel deployment.

That’s the first idea I can accept since I posted the OBS idea. Thank you although I have to say it’s hard but not impossible.

Chinese SSBN is OK with JL-2A or JL-3. in the context of a surprise attack it is hard to coordinate SSNs which can't communicate easily 2 way, with planes. As you know most SSNs can only listen on ELF when submerged and ELF has very low bandwidth (text only) and is emitted from fixed stations.

They can take out either the silos first or the SSBNs first, but hard to do so simultaneously. Remember the margin of error is measured in minutes, so telling a sub "move to this location and sink the SSBN nearby" in advance would fail if the SSBN sailed even just 10 km off expected course. Sailing 10 km off course is possible solely from errors in inertial navigation. so you need a real time 2 way high bandwidth channel. And this is assuming that NONE of China's ASW works at all, it's just the inherent difficulty of coordinating down to the minute when you don't have real time 2 way communication.

I'm glad you realize the difficulty of hitting multiple geographically dispersed targets simultaneously and stealthily. SSBNs and TELs produce the exact same effect.

 

[Jason_]

The bombs dropped from B-21 can be shot down. Because the B-2/21 must be outside the nuclear blast radius it must fly at high altitude, meaning over a minute of bomb free fall time.

 

[SEAD]

I believe B61 is only for show of strength, similarly to what Russia is doing in Baltic today. It wouldn't scare a superpower with credible second strike capability. At the end of day, B61 is only a gravity bomb even if it is guided.

It is impossible to hit all 350 silos in 5 minutes without notice. EVEN IF it does, a second strike capability means that US still can't win a nuclear war by disarming silos. 350 B-61s need about 20-30 B-2s, flying over pacific or mid-east then deep inland Chinese mainland, at a point there is no turning back.

Let's say US president ordered 30 B-2 bombers with nuclear bombs on board to fly into Chinese mainland, with mission to destroy silos.

1. Then he pressed the button. Extreme shocking on Chinese side, who also presses the button five minutes later after verification. Launching all remaining silo missiles, submarine missiles and nuclear ALBMs. Nuclear war begins, no one wins.

2. He didn't press the button, but at this point there is no turning back as Chinese may shoot down your bombers with nuclear bombs on board while deep inside Chinese territory.

Either you get a nuclear war or the biggest diplomatic scandal ever existed.

US nuclear doctrine believes that US can WIN a nuclear war, that’s what I wonder.

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that’s also my idea for SSN and B-21 operation: USN plan to clear CCCP SSBNs in several weeks and endure their missiles, just for playing a “game of chicken” with CCCP leadership. I wonder it may happen again.

 

[SEAD]

And how are you going to jam them? For example, the silo field in Hami is closer to Mongolia than India. So to get there you will need to fly over Russia and Mongolia, or India itself. Remember, ECM planes are not stealthy and will have to be aerial refueled. Such a complicated operation is impossible to hide.

Dropping decoys from B-2/B-21 is also unrealistic. Not only do you have to penetrate really deep into Chinese IADS, you will be risking interception by patrolling planes. In this case, there is no need for radars. A plane with EOTS will be able to detect stealth bombers from 50-70 km away. Also, keep in mind that it is very expensive to fly a stealth bomber.

Finally, what if one of the planes suffer from mechanical failure and crashes in China? What kind of diplomatic incident will that be?


What about the inactive warheads in orbit? It is impossible to recover them. Do you let them crash? Do you de-orbit them and risk detonation? What about the Pu-239 onboard? What if there is a radioactive leak?

Your idea calls for your entire silo-based stockpile every 2 years. My idea calls for maintaining the stockpile for 50 years. Which one do you think is cheaper and more reliable?

Finally, why would you need a silo to launch anything to orbit? If you are building a nuclear deterrent in orbit, that means you are doing so in peacetime. Why not just grab a long march 5 and load hundreds of warheads onboard? There is no point in using military missiles when civilian rockets are cheaper and better for the job.

You begin to convince me. But I wonder if you can convince somebody like Trump. China needs more solid deterrence power to convince everyone in such a political environment.

 

[Kalec]

Great criticism. For me the main advantage of OBS is that it avoids false alarm so Launch-on-warning(LoW) can reliably work. You know neither US nor CCCP actually run LoW doctrines, mainly because of the pressure of decision making. LoW is necessary for China especially considering their TELs and SSBNs are not enough for second strike, but not necessary for US/CCCP. At the same time, without the fear of false alarm triggered war, China can deploy a fully automatic launching system with short range alarm(which should be effective for stealthy targets)and that would ban any B21/LRSO first strike.

OBS is milky way more expensive than second strike force on land. Silo has the best cost-effective, greatest throweight/cost ratio and safest record.

I think you misunderstand LoW. The beauty of LoW is not about exactly launching ICMBs on warning but making your adversaries believe you will. And there is no 100% assurance China won't launch on warning.

200 of current 350 silos, each with 6-8 around 500 kilotons warheads, can result in total annihilation of civilization, even on a 50% ABM intercepting rate. Why would anyone bet on "My SLBMs is so huge, bigly and they can destroy your silos in 5 minutes."

I would even assume, the more aggressive your LoW is, the less chance US will ever play nuclear stick.

 

[bustead]

US nuclear doctrine believes that US can WIN a nuclear war, that’s what I wonder.

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that’s also my idea for SSN and B-21 operation: USN plan to clear CCCP SSBNs in several weeks and endure their missiles, just for playing a “game of chicken” with CCCP leadership. I wonder it may happen again.

1. I am actually in Colin Gray's camp. I believe that nuclear wars can be won. However, that does not mean nuclear warfare is the best solution. The risk still outweighs any benefits in most cases.

2. Enduring the missile strikes for a few weeks? Do you mind clarifying?

The current US doctrine of flexible response calls for a prolonged nuclear conflict. However, that is because the US will be trying to control the intensity of the conflict for its own benefit. In other words, the US may decide to escalate a tactical nuclear war into one where major cities are targeted if it feels that the benefits of doing that is tangible and outweighs its own losses. However, in your proposal, the US seems to be going for the adversary's second strike capabilities as its opening move. I presume that it is also accompanied by strikes against silos and TELs as well?

In that case, this is a classical first strike. By launching such a strike, you are asking for a retaliation.