Is the PLA vulnerable to pre-emptive strike now and in the near future?

Hello all:

I am sorry my previous threads keep getting closed down and I promise to be more circumspect with this thread. Let's hope it lasts...

Anyway, I was curious about your opinions about how vulnerable you think the PLA is to an American/Japanese (most likely American) pre-emptive strike on its nuclear and aero-naval forces. How much damage would be done? Would the PLA be totally decapitated and unable to recover?

You know my opinion... Assume US has gathered the location of most of the PRC's mobile nuclear launchers and warheads through satellite, UAVs, other high tech means, and good old human information. B-2s are on standby to infiltrate air defenses and take them out. Hopefully so few Chinese nukes (less than 10 or so) would be left that the Chinese would be unwilling to fire the rest off in retaliation, in fear of losing their remaining leverage. Most of the Chinese submarine fleet is ready to be simultaneously torpedoed, as it has been shadowed by US Los Angeles class attack subs. CBGs and fighter/strategic bomber squadrons are prepared to gain air superiority and conduct massive air strikes on PLA air bases, communication centers, and command centers. Guided missile destroyers, cruisers, and the carriers' air wings are also prepared to simultaneously bring their massive power to bear against the unprepared and scattered Chinese fleet. All of this will be happening simultaneously. Any surviving stragglers would be promptly eliminated in a second volley. Once Chinese nuclear and aero-naval forces have been decimated (and SAM systems suppressed), USN and USAF is prepared to cause carnage on China's ground forces, soft targets, and infrastructure. I think China's military is vulnerable to pre-emptive strike now and in the near future.

The question is, do you guys think so?

Please read the latest Pentagon China report.

If anybody in Washington even thinks about messing with core Chinese interests, the 60 most populous and richest American cities will be replaced by craters. Not only that, Chinese technology has pretty much reached par with Russian technology in most fields at this point. In 10 years, it will reach par with US technology too. The US economy is on a massive downslide with the dollar collapsing the world's oil will be denominated in Euro. The US will not keep its top dog position for more than 15 years, I guarantee it.

Defense News, a U.S. weekly on security issues, reported on July 10 that China plans to deploy starting 2007 the ICBM Dong Feng-31A, the first nuclear-capable missile of its kind with a range of 7,000 miles.

A 7,000 mile (11,270 km) range includes Washington D.C. as well as Madrid and Paris. The DF-31 can be armed with up to three nuclear warheads.

The new DF-31A boasts mobility, which reduces the risk of coming under preemptive fire. China’s previous ICBM, the DF-5 (range 5,200 miles, or 8,372 km) deployed 25 years ago, had been immobile.

The magazine noted that a total of sixty DF-31 missiles were going to be deployed, including the standard DF-31 deployed from end of last year.

Click to expand...

In case you were wondering, the sixieth largest city in America is St. Paul, Minneasota.

Roger dude, you might want to make your posts more directly related to the OP, as in on topic. I'll keep it here for now though, since it still has a *somewhat* relevant point to the topic.

Or at least you could have found a blunter way to say that the PLA's system of defense against enemy attack would be Cold War-style MAD...

Dear Sir:

This is my opinion. To undertake a fully comprehensive "decapitating" strike such as you posit in your 1st statement would mean the rapid and large-scale mobilization of vast resources. This would not pass unnoticed. Furthermore there is usually a triggering "crises" so that in the most likely scenarios there would be some degree of advanced warning. This would the Chinese leadership the time to alert its forces.

In the event of a Pearl Harbour style of attack, much less mobilization time would be available to the US-Japan forces. Given the vast size of China (some 5% to 6% larger than the USA - including Alaska and Hawaii) and fact that most of it is mountainous, nothing short of an all-out strike is likely to succeed.

There is also the problem of time - if you choose to use forces like the Stealth bombers and cruise missiles, any initial strike (apart from the missiles) can only be followed up after many hours at best. Any nuclear retaliatory system that survives the 1st strike can then be launched before the slower component arrives.

Yes in the end a full-scale pre-emptive stike by the US and Japan would devastate China. However, there are so many unknowns. It is well known that China has a vast number of intermediate range ballistic missiles in its inventory ready for strike. Would Japan risk almost total devastation to repeat the Pearl Harbour attack on China?

Japan is much more urbanized that either the US or China and some 65% of its land area of about 114 to 115 thousand square miles is mountainous. So its population is highly concentrated, and therefore very vunerable to nuclear attack. It has no comprehensive air or nuclear shelter system, that is, nowhere to run.

Strategically, for Japan, participating in a nuclear attack on China is national suicide - so why do it? What will they get in return? What is the benefit of attacking your largest trade partner? Your largest market for goods -a market that will only increase (unlike that of America which as I have pointed out before is saturated and becoming protectionist, is hobbled by dual deficits and an aging population).

So although the present Japanese government (led by Junichiro Koizumi) is critical of China, it does not seek to destroy her, rather it seeks to dominate her. That is what the present leadership of the Liberal Democraic Party (who are in fact the children of wartime criminals and benefited from Japanese aggression in WWII) want.

So without the Japanese, the US will have to act alone. To assure comphrehensive destruction of China (which I may point out - has never been demonstrated before in history) it will probably have to dedicated the vast majority if not the entirety of its strategic weapons. Any retaliation by the Chinese will compel the US to fire more to remove the threat - even a few nuclear weapons leaking through can be very devastating.

Then what? Suppose Russia uses the same calculation as the US? When the US is fully engaged in China is the best opportunity for the Russians to strike! All of the sudden several thousand warheads descend on the US mainland - there is no defense. The bulk of US forces have already shot their bolt - on China, so retaliation against Russia is minimal. And voila! - we have a new hyperpower - Russia.

Scenariso like these all show how unpredictable nuclear warfare is. Mutual assured destruction has kept the peace so far. Let us hope it continues to do so.

Best Regards,

Dusky Lim

Well I do agree with USAalltheway that China's military is vulnerable now and int he near future to a US pre-emptive strike. China's still relatively small (only a hundred or two hundred) nuclear forces could be nearly annihilated without even the need to suppress air defenses until later volleys, if US used all stealth aircraft (B-2s, F-22s, B-1Bs) to infiltrate undetected western China and simultaneously precision bomb/missile all known silos, mobile launch platforms, and missile control centers.

I would not underestimate US capability in this area. Remember that towards the end of Cold War, MAD was already seeming less assured. With entrance B-2s, F-117, and late generation Tomahawk cruise missile US was already close to gaining the potential to take out most of USSR's nuclear missile force in pre-emptive strike. Remember this was one of the reasons the Soviets bankrupt themselves and surrendered? They realized the US was gaining too much potential to pre-empt the USSR nuclear forces and they (the Soviets) thus spent too much money trying unsuccessfully to counter stealth aircaft and cruise missiles. In fact, it was estimated at the time (in 1990) is the US chose to pre-empt USSR's ICBMs, only a hundred or two would survive. I think if US had the potential then to nearly and pre-emptively destroy USSR's 10,000 strong nuclear force back in 1990, they have the potential now to do so to China's nuclear forces today and in decades to come.

Please dont tell me your a real PLA analyst. The u.s has 90 b-1b's, 21 b-2s, and 58 f-117s. These are deployed across bases in the u.s and the world. None of them serve a nuclear role, thanks to START-II. The f-22 does not have the range to do this kind of mission. So would you mind telling me how the u.s is going to gather all these aircraft in a short amount of time, load them, transport them untected across the pacific, and fly them over Eastern China. The u.s doesnt even know where half of China's missle bases are right now, so what you say is impossible.

No need to reply to him lads...He was the reincarnation of the USAaltheway....and also banned...

I think the guy is either trolling, or completely out of his mind. During the Soviet era they built some 40+ Delta I-IV + 6 Typhoon SSBNs. Each SSBN was armed with 12-20 SLBMs, and each SLBM with up to 10 MIRV warheads.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russians reportly fielded 26 SSBNs with 440 SLBMs & 2,275 warheads in 2000:


As of June 2000 the Russian Navy claimed that it operated 26 strategic nuclear submarines carrying 2,272 nuclear warheads on 440 ballistic missiles. It broke down the total to include 5 Typhoon class submarines, 7 Delta IV class submarines, and 13 Delta III class submarines.

Suffice to say there was NO way the US can assure a successful pre-emptive strike against all Soviet/Russian nuclear assets at the time, on land or at sea.

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As for the pre-emptive strike on PRC question, the only way I can think of is if they somehow score a decapitating strike on Beijing to take out the political leadership, and hope the rest of the country fall into dissary and sqabbling among different regions.

The US does not have sufficient resources in the Pacific to destroy all PRC strategtic targets with one strike. However, given time, they could do the "grid" method and simply destroy all strategtic assets from grid to grid with stand-off and precision strike weapons. The US has an advantage in "long arms" (cruise missiles) vs the PLA.

My friends I agree with your assessment that USAalltheway/PLAanalyst appears to be disinformed at best or simply debile at worst.

Interestingly this person makes some patently false assumptions about the military capabilties of the former USSR. Especially his statement that US was able to take out the 13.000+ warhead (1986) soviet strategic arsenal (not to mention 25.000 available tactical nukes) is absolutely insane. USSR possesed a viable earth and space based early warning system and a elaborate automated command and control system called ´Perimetr´ which was entirely unknown to US intelligence at the time. Of course SAC´s SIOP (single integrated operations plan) included a preventive first strike option against USSR but there was no realistic option for preventing a devastating soviet second strike from happening.

DoD chief Cap Weinberger ordered extensive war game simulations in the mid 80´s since he wanted to know whether under certain conditions a first strike would be a viable option. Even the best case sim-variants left US with dozens of million dead and the worst case sims painted a picture of similar total destruction in both adversaries with hundreds of millions dead.

Reaganite propaganda maintained that Moscow was coerced by US military strength but the truth would be that USSR imploded because of economic weaknesses, ideological paralysis and (likely pivotal) leadership ineptitude.

Perhaps USAalltheway´s mind has stopped developing since the good old days of uncle Ron and so he is happy to repeat the old propaganda lines.

Mere stealth aircraft could not possibly prevent a retaliation strike. Even Serbia, with 70's era technology, could shoot down a stealth plane. Nevermind the Soviet Union or China today, which have their own stealth programs and anti-stealth sensors!

The first reaction of the pilots as they approached China would be, "What the hell? Aren't we suppose to be undetectable?"