China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

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ZeEa5KPul

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Can someone recommend a book so I can become an 'expert' on nukes and ballistic missiles?
Not a book, but Scott Manley's channel on YT has excellent playlists. This is one on nuclear weapons:
As for books, that depends on your mathematics background - if you're comfortable with basic to intermediate calculus, any textbook on orbital mechanics will equip you with plenty more than you need to understand ICBM trajectories. A textbook on solid rocket propulsion will teach you how the motors work and crucial concepts like specific impulse.

A quick Google search was able to yield "online editions" for Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students and Rocket Propulsion Elements. That should be more than enough to get you started.
 

Strangelove

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Chinese engineers verified new hypersonic rocket technologies


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The team behind the "Feitian-1" test rocket pose for a photo before its launch, northwestern China, July 4, 2022. /CMG

A team of engineers at China's Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) successfully launched a test rocket on Monday, verifying several new technologies used on hypersonic rockets, according to a report from China Media Group on Wednesday.

The rocket, named "Feitian-1," is equipped with a combined cycle ramjet engine that burns kerosene, which accelerated to hypersonic speed without using dangerous fuel like liquid hydrogen.

The report said the engine went through four different propulsion states in a stable manner, achieving breakthroughs in several key parts.

The logos of NPU, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), a rocket maker, and Shaanxi Province Aerospace and Astronautics Propulsion Research Institute, can be seen on the rocket.

The technologies tested on this rocket can be used to build aerospaceplanes, a reusable combination of plane, rocket and spacecraft that can fly both in air and space.

"Feitian" is also the name of spacesuits used on China's space station. The name refers to a kind of Buddhist goddesses that can fly.
In modern Chinese language, the word can also mean flying in the sky without the Buddhist context.
 

clockwork

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Does anyone have a list of the DF-5 silo coords by any chance? The FAS guys publish coords of the DF-5 equipped brigades but not their actual silo positions. While this should be public knowledge and there's only like 20 of them.
 

ZeEa5KPul

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@Crang this two part lecture is a good introduction to the physics of nuclear weapons:
Edit: At 21:00 of the first video, the "classified" (lel, as if anyone with a slight interest in the subject doesn't know what he's talking about) technique he's talking about is shaping the pit to be an ellipsoid instead of a sphere. That way the surrounding explosive lens is easier to design and smaller since the shockwave doesn't have to be spherical.
 
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clockwork

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Just wanted to summarize/aggregate the silo news so far: with about 120 each being built at Hami and Yumen, at least 80 at Hanggin banner (up from the original 30 found by CASI in Aug 2021, possible even more there eventually to be more in line with the other 2 fields?), a dozen at Jilantai training area, and apparent construction of a handful (<10) of DF-5Cs, which adds up to about 330 new silos. In addition to the 18 older DF-5A/B silos, China's ICBM silo count approaches the US's (400), exceeds Russia's, and if all filled even with very conservative MIRV assumptions, the number of silo based warheads vastly exceeds either the US or Russia's. So there's no need for any additional silo buildup whatsoever to reach parity. Now there should be more mobile DF-41s built and assigned to brigades.

Also waiting impatiently for 096 news (the majority of the US's warheads are sub-based, after all).
 
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FairAndUnbiased

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Just wanted to summarize/aggregate the silo news so far: with about 120 each being built at Hami and Yumen, at least 80 at Hanggin banner (up from the original 30 found by CASI in Aug 2021, possible even more there eventually to be more in line with the other 2 fields?), a dozen at Jilantai training area, and apparent construction of a handful (<10) of DF-5Cs, which adds up to about 330 new silos. In addition to the 18 older DF-5A/B silos, China's ICBM silo count approaches the US's (400), exceeds Russia's, and if all filled even with very conservative MIRV assumptions, the number of silo based warheads vastly exceeds either the US or Russia's. So there's no need for any additional silo buildup whatsoever to reach parity. Now there should be more mobile DF-41s built and assigned to brigades.

Also waiting impatiently for 096 news (the majority of the US's warheads are sub-based, after all).
096 still does not really solve the big problem: entire Yellow Sea and East China Sea are so shallow that SSBN stuck on its end sticks out of the water. That is to say, there is no room for pitch maneuver and rapid diving could result in collision with the bottom. So the only possible place is SCS which is highly contested and still enclosed. In addition they typically have 30-50% availability while silos have 100% availability and TELs have close to 100% availability.

I'd say having a few 094s and 096s to diversify and force enemies to divert tons of ASW resources is a good thing, but unlike US and Russia who have open access to deep water in the Pacific/Atlantic and Arctic, respectively, China does not. The good thing is that China has huge landmass and lots of cover. I suspect ground based ICBMs and TELs will be the mainstay for a long time.
 

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
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Also waiting impatiently for 096 news (the majority of the US's warheads are sub-based, after all).
I don't think SSBNs will feature heavily in China's deterrence doctrine until it takes Taiwan. The bathymetry of mainland China's nearby waters is unconducive to submarine operations and any SSBN would have to pass chokepoints before it could begin its patrol in the open ocean. Taking Taiwan would resolve all these problems in one stroke.

Road mobile and silo-based DF-41s (to be followed by DF-45s) are more than adequate for the job until then, especially given China's burgeoning launch on warning infrastructure.
They're fast breeder reactors, they produce plutonium by definition.
I feel I should elaborate here. What distinguishes weapons grade plutonium from the plutonium in a LWR's spent fuel (called "reactor grade") is the absence of the pathological isotope Pu-240. Pu-240 forms whenever a Pu-239 nucleus absorbs a neutron. This happens often in a LWR (light water reactor, by far the predominant type of nuclear reactor) because the neutrons there are slowed down (thermalized). If a Pu-239 nucleus is struck by a thermal neutron, it's much more likely to absorb it rather than fission, building up the undesirable Pu-240 isotope.

By contrast, in a fast reactor (so called because - surprise - the neutrons aren't slowed down, so they're fast) a Pu-239 struck by a neutron is far more likely to fission than absorb that neutron because the fast neutron's high energy destabilizes the nucleus. While we'd rather Pu-239 not be hit by any neutrons, it's far better to lose some Pu-239 to fission than to have it absorb neutrons and transform into Pu-240. In a fast reactor, that's exactly what happens and there's very little Pu-240 buildup - that's what makes the plutonium in a fast reactor's "spent fuel" weapons grade.
 

clockwork

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SSBNs can still operate from a near perfectly safe environment if they do bastion ops from e.g. Bohai, as long as they can keep US SSNs out which shouldn't be hard. A handful of 096s would suffice for the time being.

I should add that the total silo warhead count may not be that high if they deploy a lot of HGVs on them instead of MIRVs or they're filled by the DF-31AG as claimed, but I find that unlikely. (seems to me like the US BMD system would have to get a lot more advanced for deploying HGVs as the primary payload to start to make sense over a (much higher) number of MIRVs).
 
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