PresentDangerChina.org take on US-China relationship

Bob Smith said:

I give little credit to anything Bannon says. He is an attention whore that loves to broadcast to the world how tough he is. If he wanted to do the most damage, he wouldn't go on multiple networks to show to the world what he's planning, but instead, do so quietly.

Also, China's nuclear arsenal is a closely held secret. The 280 nuke count is an estimate by the West. They don't announce their number because they don't want to alarm India into producing more nukes. If push came to shove and there was the possibility of a hot war with the US, I'm certain China's nuke count shown to the world will be well above 280.

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Nuclear warheads are different from "launch vehicles" (the carrier rockets). Western intelligence have been for years trying to guess China's nuclear warheads using variety of means and the best they can conclude is China has less than 300 nuclear warheads due to extremely limited production of Tritium. Even USA is experiencing shorfall in Tritium production to power their nuclear arsenals.




On the other hand, launch vehicles (the carrier rockets) are large and often seen by satellites and probably verified by the teams on the ground. Currently less than 70 ICBMs in total are in chinese arsenals. 1/3 of that are the ancient DF-5 variants which are silo-based and expected to be taken-out before they can even be launched. So in reality it is less than 50 ICBMs that China has vs 10,000 intercepting missiles (SM-3 / SM-6) that USA has - I highly doubt US is even remotely scared of China's nuclear deterrence.

Limited production of tritium? AFAIK you can produce it with a neutron source and China has no lack of civilian nuclear reactors.
They even have CANDU reactors which produce tritium by default because they use heavy water as a moderator.

Bob Smith said:

I give little credit to anything Bannon says. He is an attention whore that loves to broadcast to the world how tough he is. If he wanted to do the most damage, he wouldn't go on multiple networks to show to the world what he's planning, but instead, do so quietly.

Also, China's nuclear arsenal is a closely held secret. The 280 nuke count is an estimate by the West. They don't announce their number because they don't want to alarm India into producing more nukes. If push came to shove and there was the possibility of a hot war with the US, I'm certain China's nuke count shown to the world will be well above 280.

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Also I forgot to mention - Chinese nuclear arsenal is probably no longer state secret by now to the US and its allies - remember this guy Ling Wancheng who is the brother of the famous Ling Jihua ? Supposedly he took all the chinese state secret with him to the US as a bargaining chip.

So the number of nukes, launch vehicles, where abouts, basing and personnels of China's nuclear force is probably already given to the US and the US are now tracking all of these targets. Sadly China can't just magically "wish up" thousands of new nukes and launch missiles - it will take DECADES to do so. Basically China is a sitting duck if US decided to do first strike.

Whatever he leaked out, China has developed the DF-31AG and DF-41 since that. Both those missiles are in road-mobile launchers unlike the ancient DF-5 rockets.
They provide China with a credible second strike capability.

gelgoog said:

Whatever he leaked out, China has developed the DF-31AG and DF-41 since that. Both those missiles are in road-mobile launchers unlike the ancient DF-5 rockets.
They provide China with a credible second strike capability.

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How many are there for these new puppies? I bet its less than 50.

Like I said, these new puppies need to fly over vast distance to hit continental US - and the US with about 70 Arleigh Burke class destroyers and about 20 Ticonderoga class cruisers, that's a total of about 90 destroyers and cruisers with SM-3 and SM-6 missiles on board. Each one can host about 100 of these puppies that makes it about 9000 intercepting missiles.... even if we half that for different load packages and attack profile that's still 4500 intercepting missiles from the US Navy alone. You are not even counting Aegis Ashore, and then you have the ground-based interceptors (GBIs), the THAAD...etc etc. Any time over the 10,000 km flight these few puppies China has USA has plenty of resources and time to intercept them. The probability of China scoring a hit in continental US is miniscule.

Not to forget, US's forward basing strategy pays off big time against China. US can fire their nukes closer to Chinese shore than China can fire them from theirs. That means a lot of these ICBMs will get destroyed before they can even be launched.

And US are now so forward base near China they are practically in Chinese water. The Arleigh Burke are regularly sailing past Taiwan Strait which means these Burkes can practically do boost-phase interception which is when the ICBMs are most vulnerable, and dramatically lowers any chance that China will land any hit in USA.

So. What's the point of second strike when none of the missile can even land in USA? (or get past even middle of pacific)

A US navy ship passing through the Taiwan Strait has zero chance of intercepting a Chinese ICBM launched from the mainland heading to the US. Take a look at a map and see. The SM-6 or whatever would be chasing a Chinese ICBM meaning no chance of intercepting. The fact is the best chance for an interceptor to hit its target is if it's along the flight path of the ICBM. Anywhere else is basically zero chance. What's in between China and the US? A whole lot of land owned by Russia. Do you think the US would park off in the Artic the majority of its fleet 24/7 waiting for Chinese ICBMs to launch? So that brings up the question why brag about the US Navy having this capability when they can more easily and be less expensive to have these missiles stationed in Alaska? The US can have unlimited number of interceptors in Alaska. They already have land based interceptors there so why all the attention on the Navy. Are they more capable? I read an article that said the US would have to launch around eight interceptors to get a 40% chance of knocking down one ICBM. That means they would have to launch at least double that just to be close to success. Good luck with your inventories. But really it's all propaganda like the US airborne laser. That would've done the job and would've been more efficient than missiles yet cancelled because it didn't live up to the hype aka propaganda.

I don't know what has changed from the fact the US has only demonstrated to be able to knock down an ICBM under the most ideal of conditions meaning an unrealistic real war scenario. Is it because of Israel's Iron Dome? That seems to be the only catalyst into arrogance. Recently it was exposed it can be overwhelmed. And let's not forget there was already questioning to claims of how successful it has been.

Ultra said:

How many are there for these new puppies? I bet its less than 50.

Like I said, these new puppies need to fly over vast distance to hit continental US - and the US with about 70 Arleigh Burke class destroyers and about 20 Ticonderoga class cruisers, that's a total of about 90 destroyers and cruisers with SM-3 and SM-6 missiles on board. Each one can host about 100 of these puppies that makes it about 9000 intercepting missiles.... even if we half that for different load packages and attack profile that's still 4500 intercepting missiles from the US Navy alone. You are not even counting Aegis Ashore, and then you have the ground-based interceptors (GBIs), the THAAD...etc etc. Any time over the 10,000 km flight these few puppies China has USA has plenty of resources and time to intercept them. The probability of China scoring a hit in continental US is miniscule.

Not to forget, US's forward basing strategy pays off big time against China. US can fire their nukes closer to Chinese shore than China can fire them from theirs. That means a lot of these ICBMs will get destroyed before they can even be launched.

And US are now so forward base near China they are practically in Chinese water. The Arleigh Burke are regularly sailing past Taiwan Strait which means these Burkes can practically do boost-phase interception which is when the ICBMs are most vulnerable, and dramatically lowers any chance that China will land any hit in USA.

So. What's the point of second strike when none of the missile can even land in USA? (or get past even middle of pacific)

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The Aegis system, SM-3, and SM-6 are not designed to shooting down ICBMs. They can engage MRBMs like the DF-21, but not the DF-31 or DF-41. The GBIs may have a chance to shoot down ICBMs, but there are only 64 deployed in Alaska and California, not to mention that you need 2-4 GBIs to intercept one ICBM on average. The PLARF and PLAN have enough ICBMs and SLBMs - especially newer ones with MIRVs - to saturate the 64 GBIs in a nuclear exchange.

Steve bannon is feeling nervous that China labels him as the public enemy #1

Ultra said:

Sadly China can't just magically "wish up" thousands of new nukes and launch missiles - it will take DECADES to do so. Basically China is a sitting duck if US decided to do first strike.

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there's a graph in this forum shows in the 1950s, both the US and the USSR added thousands more nukes to their arsenals annually, you need to show why China cannot do it today.

again China's "minimum deterrent" strategy is an enigma beyound belief.

I doubt China still has such a limited amount of nuclear warheads. Most estimates I know of are based off numbers like two decades old.
From back when China was still relying on the huge DF-4 and DF-5 ICBMs with large unitary warheads.

I know last time I did a guesstimate just based on the number of DF-31 and DF-41 launchers and the amount of warheads per launcher they are supposed to have I counted a lot more warheads, like several hundred. If you add the DF-21 and DF-26 to that then you can see the numbers should be pretty high.

Then there is the fact we have no really reliable upper bound on the amount of DF-31s and DF-41s in service.

Just check the DF-41 article at Wikipedia for example.

Richard Fisher, an expert on Asia-Pacific military affairs, says that a typical

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unit has 6-12 missile launchers and may have an additional 6-12 "reload missiles", i.e. missiles to be launched after the first missile with which the launcher is equipped are launched, indicating 12-24 DF-41 missiles per one unit and giving a single SAC unit the capability to target the contiguous United States with 120-240 nuclear warheads.

Though the news media has reported rumors that the DF-41 can carry 6 to 10 warheads, analysts think it most likely carries only three warheads, with the additional payload used for many

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.

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So their estimate is a DF-41 unit has 120-240 nuclear warheads. IIRC there are supposedly two operational DF-41 units. So probably in DF-41 warheads alone there are may be more than 300 operational warheads. Fact is I expect China to have more warheads than the UK and France combined.