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China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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Typically you need wider diameter than missile diameter for things like maintenance spaces, exhaust vent shaft, motors and transmission for the door lift mechanism, power distribution, etc.
Titan 2 silos are 55 ft diameter (18 m) for a 3 m diameter missile.
Minuteman silos are 12 ft (4 m) diameter for a 1.68 m diameter missile.
It isn't too outlandish for a 5 m silo for 2 m missile.
I used the search funtion but did not find an answer, in case delete the post:
Seen the incredible and unbelievable progress of China space technology only in the last 10 years or so, if China wanted to arm some satellite with ICBM in the next few years what would be the possibility that the US would detect this move ? Would the lauch of an ICBM armed satellite be different from a normal satellite lauch ?
Seen the incredible and unbelievable progress of China space technology only in the last 10 years or so, if China wanted to arm some satellite with ICBM in the next few years what would be the possibility that the US would detect this move ? Would the lauch of an ICBM armed satellite be different from a normal satellite lauch ?
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Titan 2 and Minuteman silos were built nearly 6 decades ago. Both of them are hot launched without canister as you need exhaust exits in hot launch, which I think (not sure) it will need more space for the silo. A Minuteman silo can be modified to fit in a Peacekeeper missile even if it is much larger than a MM3. I think the silo dimension might be more relatable to RT-23 silos given that both of them were newly built.
I am skeptical if DF-41 is suitable for silo deployment. DF-41 is a road mobile ICBM, though it is not the case they are deployed in reality and still need hardened ground to launch. It weight, 58 tons, is specifically designed to be restrained by road limit, whereas a silo-based ICBM is not and can be transported stage by stage just as Peacekeeper did.
Financially, Heavy ICBM is more cost-effective than Light/Medium. For example, every DF-41 could carry 3 warheads from Yumen to Manhattan meanwhile a peacekeeper alike can carry 6 warheads with only 1.5 of its cost.
Also in terms of arm control, 330 silos of DF-41s can facilitate around 1,000 warheads and 30 DF-5C will carry another 180 warheads. Still 400 warheads gap to nuclear parity within START treaty.
Who says it's only 3?
If you meant to be deploying them with lighter warheads (Assuming it does exist and reliable), still need more warheads to secure a MAD.
Do you think that a hypothetical silo based DF-41 are going to be for cold launch, like the original capsule, or modified for hot launch? That will determine the size.
I also think that the cost and particularly time savings from going with a DF-41 or modernized DF-5 would be worth more than squeezing the last bit of performance out of the silos at the cost of an entire new program requiring multiple full test fires, expenditure of dozens of rocket engines and millions of hours of engineering time.
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