Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
China Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: US vs China: nuclear war? - an impossibility
Iron Logician    1/17/2004 4:52:43 PM
A few reasons from a scientist point of view: 1) Regardless whether or not the US builds missile defense shield, China continues to build more missiles that carry neclear war head(s). China possesses more than half of the world's known rare earth mineral deposit containing both Lanthanide and Actinide Series (Pu and U in the latter). Mobile land and sub-based missiles will likely survive the first strike. It is unclear how many they have built (its first one was almost 40 years ago, then H-bomb, and neutron bombs) how many more they will build. China's economy if based on PPP (purchasing power parity) estimate is already many times bigger than ex-USSR. So it is safe to presume that it can at least easily make as many as ex-USSR in the coming years. 2) 10,000 nuclear explosions in China are NOT sufficient to vitrify the land owning to geological and geographical complications, eg, China has far more mountains than US. Theoretical calculation suggests that such vitrification process requires roughly 192,0000 explosions. However, the nuclear fall-out (ie, airborne radioactive particles) will drift acoss pacific ocean and deposit in the US mainland, destroying every live-stock on the way. Everyone knows why a balloon can drift from China to the US, not the other way around. 3) The most compelling reason, perhaps, is the fact that after the first strike, the remaining Chinese missiles will be launched towards all major US cities and industrial centers. Despite the missile defense shield, a certain % will pass, land, and explode. The impact of 9/11 was shocking to most in the world (eg, most Americans probably delayed their retirement for a few years!); one cannot imagine the impact of nuclear explosions. Western civilization values human life and prosperity far more than Eastern civilization, such an nuclear exchange will certainly result in the destruction of both civilizations or the return of the dark age for many years to come; nevertheless, the rich or haves have much more to lose than the poor or have-nots. The US or American people is highly unlikely to take such risk of a certain known outcome. Good life is just too important.
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Pages: PREV  1 2 3 4 5   NEXT
EastWind_81    RE:Does US know exact size of China's ICBM arsenal?   1/21/2004 3:25:15 PM
Let's stick to official figures only: the Second Artillery's official annual budget is about $2 billion (of PLA's total $20 billion budget). Of this I estimate 20-30% is alloted for procurement of new systems, the remainder for maintenance/deployment/personel of existing systems, R&D, etc. So that's $500 million for new missiles of all ranges. Now a typical Minuteman ICBM's unit cost is $5-7 million, so let's say for argument's sake a new DF-31 ICBM costs $5 million. Doing the math: if only 1/5 of the budget for buying new systems is reserved for ICBMs, 2nd Artillery is able to buy 20 DF-31s yearly. More realistically I'd say 1/2 the procurement budget is for long-range missiles - that's 50 DF-31s yearly! So taking this worst-case speculation, maybe China's well on its way to a much higher level of deterrence vis-a-vis US & Russia. In reality I doubt annual production to be much greater than 10-20 units as cost overuns are commonplace in any defense program & corruption might be a major problem, but given the PLA's official budget being smaller than its actual, can't rule out the higher figures. Most interestingly the western media still cites 'only 20 ICBMs' with no exception. All major policy papers likewise. China hasn't been helpful in clearing things up - still publishes virtually no info on its nukes. But can you imagine: given how massively Bush exaggerated Iraq's WMD threat, what would the same kind of extrapolation lead his neocon advisors to dream up for China? I'm surprised none of them have warned China may already be a threat on the degree of USSR 40 years ago.
 
Quote    Reply

hybrid    RE:Does US know exact size of China's ICBM arsenal?   1/22/2004 4:32:43 AM
Official figures? Okie Dokie..heres some from NTI.org: "By the end of 1991, the Guangyuan reactor produced an estimated 1-4 tons of weapons-grade plutonium... Once the Guangyuan facility is decommissioned then China will not operate any plutonium producing facilities. It is widely acknowledged that China stopped producing plutonium in the late 1980s and that it has stockpiled large quantities of weapon grade plutonium." Regarding the other 3 plants NTI says they believe their operational life has produced another 3-5 tons of weapons grade plutonium. Now what ISNT talked about is tritium production. Its one thing to have fissile material, but if you're talking about strategic level nukes (not like what Pakistan/India have but on the 100kt-1MT lvls) you need tritium big time. As far as I can tell there are no official numbers on it that aren't classified. Tritium (and with Tritium comes later Lithium Deuteride) is a strategic level resource and extremely expensive to produce per ounce. If china's figured out a new way to mass produce this or better way to store it then I'll be extremely surprised. Till then their nuke force is more hot air then substance for anyone not within 1000km of their borders.
 
Quote    Reply

EastWind_81    Hello? You talk as if China can't make hydrogen bombs   1/22/2004 12:15:39 PM
You have your basic nuclear physics wrong. Expensive tritium reactors were rendered unnecessary once a nation mastered the design of two-stage "dry" thermonuclear devices. Using lithium (usually Li-6) it's possible to create deuterium and tritium "on the fly" in an H-bomb's initial fission reaction. Only well-established nuclear states that have conducted dozens of tests over the decades have this capability - India and Pakistan have too little experience with nukes to bypass the mass-tritium-production stage. Even more true for Israel with its undeclared 100-200 warheads. If your claims are true it should mean China doesn't have a thermonuclear arsenal - when in fact it exploded its first H-bomb (3.3 MT) way back in 1967, & the DF-5 ICBMs are thought to have 2-5 MT warheads. It's one thing to say India & Pakistan haven't mastered this technology yet, but China? Gimme a break. For the record, here's some more food for thought: (2) China's widely believed to have sold tritium to Pakistan back in 80s, though no evidence exists that Pakistan has H-bombs in its arsenal (3) There are 3 known facilities in China probably involved in tritium/lithium production: Ningxia Non-Ferrous Metal Research Institute, Yibin Nuclear Fuel Plant, Baotou Nuclear Fuel Component Plant. China is a VAST country & given how US intelligence can't even ascertain all nuclear facilities in Iran & North Korea, how likely is it that all such facilities in China have been located? (4) Until recently, most warheads carried by China's ballistic missiles were of fairly high yield - typically 100s kt to 1-2 MT. This was true for CSS-2 (up to 100 deployed in 80s), CSS-3 (~20 deployed), CSS-4 (20+ in service). In 90s China shifted emphasis to smaller, lighter warheads (up to 500kt).
 
Quote    Reply

hybrid    RE:Hello? You talk as if China can't make hydrogen bombs   1/22/2004 1:42:22 PM
Eastwind, I didn't say China doesn't have tritium production. I merely pointed out that it isn't mentioned HOW MUCH is produced in open sources. Also tritium production aint cheap or EASY to produce under ANY circumstance. As far as multi-stage atomic devices in a lithium deuteride bomb you may still need tritium as a fission booster for the initial reaction of the first stage. Even if you didn't you'd have one heavy bomb. This was what Ulam and Teller found out when they designed their H-Bombs. You could either go with compact low density H-Bombs which would have tritium, the negative of that is that tritium is very hard to produce. OR you could use a two stage lithium deuteride bombs and similar heavy water type bombs. The problem with those is that they ARE BIG MASSES. Most of those types of bombs were only air droppable rather than ICBM deliverable. Trust me on this even if you don't believe anything else I say, tritium production is expensive (VERY EXPENSIVE) and for bomb production either you have tritium or your bombs start getting towards the massive weight end of the scale (ie. for megaton scale weapons you could have upwards of a ton or 2 in weight). Back to my point. Without knowing how much is tritium is produced you're left with tallying which ICBMs China has that has multiple warheads and hundred kilotons (several hundred that is) to multi-megaton range. As far as I know theres very few if any of these correct (Probably the DF-31s, as the last I heard the DF-5's haven't been refurbished for multiple warheads yet)? Most of China's missile force of ICBM's and IRBMs consist of single warhead delivery systems? That tells you then two things. One either they don't have the machining or precision guidance systems down pat yet regarding MIRV accuracy or two, there isn't enough tritium production to use "boosted" warheads.
 
Quote    Reply

EastWind_81    RE:Hello? You talk as if China can't make hydrogen bombs   1/22/2004 7:07:26 PM
H-bombs rely primarily on the secondary fusion stage - an unboosted (or weakly boosted) initial fission stage would require more fissionable material to achieve the same fusion threshold. Yes, boosted devices are very efficient, but you're overstating your suggestion that H-bombs are inconvenient to deliver without pre-assembled tritium: they'd obviously lower an ICBM's yield-to-thrust ratio but that doesn't mean your ICBM can't reach its target with a destructive payload. Let's put it this way: an SS-18 can hurl an 18-25MT warhead anywhere on the planet, a DF-5 can hurl a 3-5MT warhead anywhere. At the end of the day does it make such a huge difference? China won't be mass-producing warheads as compact & deadly as the W-88 anytime soon, that doesn't mean it can't deploy large numbers of less efficient (but still lethal) nukes on long-range missiles. The DF-5 has a throw-weight exceeding 3000kg (3 tons), so it's perfectly capable of hurling a 3-5MT warhead over 10000km. Even with far lower payload-to-thrust ratio than other large ICBMs (say SS-18 or Peacekepper MX), there's no reason it can't carry 5-6 RVs of about 500kt each. IMO accuracy is a much bigger issue in explaining why China hasn't MIRVed - assuming that's still the case.
 
Quote    Reply

babloo    RE:Hello? You talk as if China can't make hydrogen bombs   1/25/2004 6:25:28 AM
r u guyz planning to erase this planet? why the hell US or china wants to nuke each of them even though the nuking capacity vary. The point is this nuclear will never happen not even between India-Pakistan. Everyone should every country's GDP is directly proportional to world's GDP so say if a small nuclear war happens then the world's economy is under turmoil and you do the math now. Insane guys to think such a scenario.
 
Quote    Reply

dh    RE:US vs China: nuclear war? - an impossibility   1/29/2004 4:21:44 AM
I don't believe that China has any serious thoughts to fight a nuke war with anyone on earth. Instead US & former USSR had plans of nuclear strikes in era of cold war. In fact there's only one country that actually deployed this WMD on civilian population in human history so far. The future risk of encountering nuclear warfare might only come from terrorist act of extremists. China is sided with US on this matter.
 
Quote    Reply

Zhang Fei    Given Chinese bloodlust, nuclear war is almost a certainty   1/30/2004 8:57:28 AM
The Chinese always quote Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of American cruelty. But the fact is that the Chinese are bloodthirsty in ways that do not relate to the purely functional intent of winning existential wars, and have participated in mind-bogglingly huge massacres throughout their history. China's First Emperor is reputed to have wiped out* an entire kingdom to the last man, woman and child (after they had surrendered) - a feat not even the Mongols carried out. More recently, during the 19th century, Chinese troops massacred 100,000 men, women and children who were remnants of the Taiping rebels who had surrendered. And of course, during the 20th century after China's *liberation*, millions of property owners, people with the wrong ideology (and people who looked at Communist cadres the wrong way) were executed, after they had all surrendered to Communist rule. The weapons used in these large-scale massacres are primitive today, but were state-of-the-art to the Chinese armies of the time - burying alive, spears, swords, pistols, rifles, bayonets, fists, torture implements - you name it, they used it. These days, the Chinese have a new toy - nuclear weapons. Given Chinese traditions, there is no doubt the Chinese will want to test their new toys at the earliest opportunity. The only thing that has prevented China from using its nukes is the leadership's instinct for self-preservation - however they might rationalize America's humanitarian instincts - they know, as night follows day, that US nuclear retaliation will follow any Chinese use of nukes against American military installations or formations. The question that is foremost in their minds is not the morality of using nukes, but whether China's military can survive the nuclear destruction of Chinese military bases (Nanjing, Guangzhou, Hainan, et al).
 
Quote    Reply

babloo    RE: Zhangfei, which part of the world do u come from   1/30/2004 11:35:02 AM
Man talk reality!! You probably are the victim of chinese torture. Are you eating dog's food made in your owner's land. Chinese never eat such food so why scolding them. China as country had long history and every human carries good and bad with him and every country in the planet there own good's and bad's ... oops my language. And remember what is the necessity for china to go for a nuclear war .. r u mad?
 
Quote    Reply

Nanheyangrouchuan    RE: Zhangfei, which part of the world do u come from   1/30/2004 9:43:37 PM
China does have a fiercly bloody history of slaughtering entire towns numbering in the 1000s to 10,000s and then saying to the rest of China "this is what we will do to you if you don't listen". This is how the 6 nations war was ended to form most of what is mainland China today. Given that these slaughters up to the cultural revolution occurred involving Chinese people this is a very serious consideration. If you will slaughter your own, what will you do to your enemy?
 
Quote    Reply
PREV  1 2 3 4 5   NEXT



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics