If there are already 1000 or even 1500 warheads then the ballistic missile count will have to follow suit. Nukes are not cheap, and using too many real warheads in MIRV is just wasting your money.
China ICBM/SLBM, nuclear arms thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
No it's not wasting money. A big city like NYC would take like a dozen or so.
Are you sure? Pretty sure ballistic missile is much more costly than nuclear warhead.
There are 4 enabling technologies necessary to change nuclear war from MAD to achievable decisive victory:
1) Conventional ABM systems (eg, ABM missiles, ASAT systems and related projectile based systems)
2) DEW based systems (eg. particle beam cannons, lasers (of various types including x-ray/gamma ray wavelengths)
3) (this includes orbital microwave arrays and solar laser transfer/satellite systems)
4) Nuclear Fusion technology
The first aspect is self-explanatory and of which China has the needed technical/industrial basis to exceed US levels. The second is another area that China has significant leads on in R&D and in service deployment (even if still in relative limited numbers) that can be continuously scaled up for increasing effectiveness. The third is another area that can also be scaled rather quickly with China's industrial base, as that would not only allow for major power generation anywhere in the world, it can also serve as an orbital strike capability able to destroy human sized targets at sea level anywhere globally with only 1 second of exposure time, which would also be powerful enough to destroying incoming ballistic missiles (an orbital array network scaled to the moon's diameter would be a necessary minimum to achieve such effects).
The last one is the hardest one but the most technically profound because it would not only allow for much more powerful DEW systems for surface-based ABM to be built, but also allow for stratospheric EM field generation and projection for attenuation of nuclear airbursts (meaning that even MT level airbursts would only be like a strong sunburn to people at ground level due to inverse square law effects), but again this is the most difficult one to achieve. The main things are that all 4 approaches need minimal fissile materiel to achieve while enabling strategically decisive capabilities to be performed simultaneously including continuous orbital bombardment of surface targets.
1) Conventional ABM systems (eg, ABM missiles, ASAT systems and related projectile based systems)
2) DEW based systems (eg. particle beam cannons, lasers (of various types including x-ray/gamma ray wavelengths)
3) (this includes orbital microwave arrays and solar laser transfer/satellite systems)
4) Nuclear Fusion technology
The first aspect is self-explanatory and of which China has the needed technical/industrial basis to exceed US levels. The second is another area that China has significant leads on in R&D and in service deployment (even if still in relative limited numbers) that can be continuously scaled up for increasing effectiveness. The third is another area that can also be scaled rather quickly with China's industrial base, as that would not only allow for major power generation anywhere in the world, it can also serve as an orbital strike capability able to destroy human sized targets at sea level anywhere globally with only 1 second of exposure time, which would also be powerful enough to destroying incoming ballistic missiles (an orbital array network scaled to the moon's diameter would be a necessary minimum to achieve such effects).
The last one is the hardest one but the most technically profound because it would not only allow for much more powerful DEW systems for surface-based ABM to be built, but also allow for stratospheric EM field generation and projection for attenuation of nuclear airbursts (meaning that even MT level airbursts would only be like a strong sunburn to people at ground level due to inverse square law effects), but again this is the most difficult one to achieve. The main things are that all 4 approaches need minimal fissile materiel to achieve while enabling strategically decisive capabilities to be performed simultaneously including continuous orbital bombardment of surface targets.
Assuming the system works, and no warhead lands on China, and China hits all its intended targets... will there not be a nuclear winter after this, or the concept of a nuclear winter is false?
The problem with this is it's hard to really know how effective a system or doctrine is in real wartime conditions until you actually put it to the test. No matter how much preparation or testing you do sometimes things don't work as planned. For most things this is fine and an accepted part of the development cycle. However for a full scale nuclear war, this has to work right the first time because if it doesn't, there won't be a next time. So the bar is set very very high for the level of robustness and certainty that the system works completely 100% the first time every time. This is not a bar that will be achievable to the satisfaction of political leadership any time soon so this talk is all pretty much moot.
It's hard to say, the original studies for nuclear winter are old and more recent studies show the problem was probably exaggerated/overblown in those old studies. However this isn't totally an insane idea, it's well established that for example large volcanic eruptions do cool the earth significantly for a long period, possibly years. So the the concept shouldn't just be completely dismissed out of hand. The basic problem is nothing like this has ever happened so nobody really knows exactly what the behavior of modern cities would be and how much soot would actually be released, etc. It's just one of those things were there's major uncertainty and there's no real way around it.
The thing is that it only needs to be at an overall 80% consistent effectiveness to be successful, as it's specifically more of an ultimate backstop rather than a preemptive system, in order to guarantee core state functionality/sustainability while permanently eliminating the attacker, and this is what's necessary when dealing with an ideological attacker, because only their guaranteed destruction while remaining viable and effective afterwards is the real deterrence at that point, not just MAD. Any additional benefits are but a bonus on top of that.
Your enemy is vaperized instantly, you will breath radio active air and drink radio active water, a slow and painful death. I think the first option is better.
I don't really understand your argument. If we model the opposition as rational actors than MAD would deter them, indeed this is what happened the entirety of the Cold War. If we model the opposition as irrational actors, akin to suicide bombers, then it seems unlikely that anything at all could deter them. After all they are irrational. Most definitely an 80% effectiveness would not be enough. Maybe you can make the case that a 100% chance of being wiped out while doing no damage could deter some irrational actors but again this is unrealistic as I said in my last post.
Do we have any ideas of the names and types of warhead (strategic, tactical, naval, gravity bomb, ICBM warheads, SLBM warheads, etc.) in service of the PLARF/PLAN/PLAAF? For example, the types and names of US and French warheads are widely available as open source. Any sources on the PLA?