Chinese Ballistic Missiles

ChinaSoldier

New Member
@Violet

from your confused speech it's hard to understand what your position is. certainly all the world knows who is the trigger happy nation in earth. my post was only my opinion. maybe china leadership is wiser than me and decides one day not to trust cowboy crazies and builds first strike anyway. usa wouldn't know about it of course just like they can't figure out even how many tanks china got.
 

Violet Oboe

Junior Member
@ChinaSoldier:
Sorry, did not want to confuse anyone but my dose of irony is sometimes too high...:)

Of course everyone is aware about the certain power committing acts of aggression regularly during the last two decades... so China has simply to adapt her strategy accordingly.
 

Skywatcher

Captain
The CMC is probably still looking for the perfect missile and then they'll deploy it on a massive scale.

On the other hand, I've heard that some of the roadblocks in Chinese strategic deployment come from either metallurgy issues (however absurd that sounds) or from the CMC not trusting the 2nd Artillery commanders (that doesn't make very much sense to me today, though maybe twenty five years ago it would have)
 

Roger604

Senior Member
There must be significantly more (2x-4x) more land-based mobile nuclear missiles than SSBN missiles. Based on confirmed numbers of SSBN's, you can estimate how many total ICBM's there are.
 

Gollevainen

Colonel
VIP Professional
Registered Member
Yeah it does...Its like the damages from a fire are directly correlated on the numbers of fire fighting vehicles in the fire site.;);) Works well if you want to belive that there are more launchers, but not if you want to know just how much there really is...
 

Roger604

Senior Member
^ The reason for my statement is that the nuclear deterrence is still primarily the role of the 2nd Artillery, not the navy. So it wouldn't make a lot of sense for the navy to have more SLBM's than the 2nd Artillery has ICBM's.
 

Gollevainen

Colonel
VIP Professional
Registered Member
It can make sense, I'm not denying that. But the logic "if there is this much these, then there must be more of those" just isen't valid in any closer look. Too often have other assumptions made by same type of logic ending up being "facts"...
 

Violet Oboe

Junior Member
Basically hiding SSBN's is quite impossible and even sometimes strategically harmful since the existence and main capabilities of the sub must be known to the main adversaries for achieving a certain deterrence effect. :coffee:

Mobile ICBM's can be hidden effectively
(a 10000 ts sub and a 50 ts truck is indeed a difference!:D) but the intention of the covert deployment of a massive force of DF-31A/41 (perhaps up to 200 launchers are obviously within PLA's short to mid-term budgetary reach...) is potentially ambiguous. Probably PLA strategists are intending to obfuscate Second Artillery capabilites to a high degree since this would complicate adversary targeting and every kind of risk calculating (e.g. :´if China has ´only 150´mobile ICBM's we could take them out in a wave of first strikes with a very high confidence but ´if China has 200´ missiles there will be a non negligible probability that a certain number of launchers would survive and their missiles break through BMD causing massive destruction on our soil. Of course this are only arbitrary numbers but PLA must achieve to top that kind of ´threshold´ (US and Russia may have different ones!) in order to attain a really credible deterrent.)

Nevertheless the US and/or Russia could misinterpret a covert deployment of mobile ICBM's as a threatening action and act accordingly (media campaign against ´China threat´, counter deployment of strategic weapons (US moves already quietly in this direction!) and even preemptive strikes (though highly unlikely)). However China's nuclear forces will be even after the current modernization many times smaller than the arsenals of Russia and the US and consequently both of them will not have to fear much from Second Artillery so China should not expect a major strategic destabilization putting her ´peaceful rise´ at risk. :coffee:

(...though living with a new nuclear number three would be disturbing enough for some neo-con's in Washington.:D)
 
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