I have information from three sources - RAND, East Asia Intel. com and the association of former intelligence officers - which is unclassified but which I am not permitted to cite formally or forward - and unclassified private correspondence with official analysts who do not wish to be named - which makes it clear that this assertion is either false or misleading. Specifically, at least two Chinese ballistic missiles are using maneuverable terminally guided warheads - and probably three are. One of these sysems was originally a SAM, so it should not be too surprising the missile can steer! If I were asked to advise serving officers in 7th Fleet in a shooting war, I would clearly state and emphasize they should expect to be targeted by PRESENT ballistic missiles - that is that ships would be so targeted. Because the capability exists - not is a future possibility - and only restraint on the part of the enemy will prevent their use.

I have information from three sources - RAND, East Asia Intel. com and the association of former intelligence officers - which is unclassified but which I am not permitted to cite formally or forward - and unclassified private correspondence with official analysts who do not wish to be named - which makes it clear that this assertion is either false or misleading. Specifically, at least two Chinese ballistic missiles are using maneuverable terminally guided warheads - and probably three are. One of these sysems was originally a SAM, so it should not be too surprising the missile can steer! If I were asked to advise serving officers in 7th Fleet in a shooting war, I would clearly state and emphasize they should expect to be targeted by PRESENT ballistic missiles - that is that ships would be so targeted. Because the capability exists - not is a future possibility - and only restraint on the part of the enemy will prevent their use.

This is old, cold war era, strategic nuclear exchange thinking. It is obsolete (please God, grant it is obsolte). Current practice is quite different. RN already formally deploys CONVENTIONALLY armed SSBNs - that is there are precision guided conventional warheads on Trident missiles on British submarines. USN formally admits to "study" of the concept - not that we actually do it - but you may take both facts as indicators of the future. My own concern, as a China analysit, is a new form of warfare invented by PLA and, I think, demonstrated in 1996. This involves using strategic missiles for precision strike, sort of very fast hard to stop conventional or tactical nuclear bombers. Certainly against land targets - air bases for example - and ships in port. But probably (indeed explicitly stated in Chinese language publications) against warships at sea. There is every reason to think GPS is to be used in all these sytems. The uncertainty is about other forms of guidance - some US official analysts have suggested to me that the Chinese claim of command guidance based on synthetic aparture detection from aircraft or satelite is not out of the question. It appears it is in development, but Chinese language materials claim it is operational.

Yeah, I agree that for tactic missles, or strategic missles used for tactic purpose, it is possible to use GPS. But not for strategic nuclear long range missles, the microwave radiated from the first strike wave will make it malfunction definitely, let along the possibility to attack GPS system directly. Nobody will risk that.

In addition to tunneling and deep-mountain storage, I have heard/read of a few other things they do to make hitting their ICBMs (and maybe IRBMs and MRBMs) harder to take out. The first is siting the silos in deep, narrow valleys, with steep mountain faces all around, so that incoming missiles have to have as close to a vertical attack profile as possible, otherwise they would basically just hit the cliffsides. Depth and narrowness are relative terms, of course. Another and possibly related technique was/is that a good portion of the launch silos are actually underwater on lake- and river-beds - basically SLBM launch-systems without the submarine. These silos are connected via tunnels dug under the lake- or riverbed, which link the launch centers to hidden and hardened access facilites on shore - in fact these access points may themselves be under the mountains in the aforementioned tunnel networks. The silos can't be in really deep parts of lakes or rivers; they are at depths of 30 to 100 meters, with the silo doors made to look like part of the beds. It can be assumed that reloading of the silos, if at all, would be from missile stocks on shore transported via the access tunnels. The two methods can be combined: silos on lake-beds, with the lake in a narrow valley or glen; or silos on river-beds, with the river winding through a gorge or "fjord". The water covering the silos are thought by the Chinese to help in 2 ways: it somewhat conceals the exact position of the silos from air- and space surveillance, plus it introduces more targetting variables at the terminal phase of a missile's flight - these combine to make direct hits less likely, so increasing the chances of the silo and its ICBM surviving. It seems there's really nothing ultra high-tech about these methods; you just must really want to protect what you have. This leads me to think there is something to these reports. How effective such methods might be, I have no idea.

I had questions about certain weapon systems and their utility, now they make sense to me. SM3, why did we need anti-ballistic missiles on a ship; self-defense. Why take a SSBN and turn it into an SSGN, a massive non-nuclear counter strike on demarcation points or, if some one is not letting out all the information, a massive strike on an invasion fleet with anti-ship missiles (I know that the SSGN is supposed to only be fitted for tomahawks but ER harpoons would fit nicely). F22 a very fast, stealthy platform that can gather electronic targeting data for stand off platforms that can also provide self-defense in a very hostile environment. Some folks on this page are ether saying just what they suppose to say or they might should be a little more careful. I have a very close friend who did less and had to have a very long talk with “the guys without a sense of humor”. No slight intended but if some one on the outside that is not in the “business” ………………… Bb

I can confirm the part about using steep mountain valleys. I think it is smart. Better than dense pack in my view. But I am not aware of under water launch for ICBMs and I am skeptical. It is not a straitforward thing, and the original ICBMs were liquid fueled. Not an ideal thing to be dealing with fuels and ozidizers under water like that.

Reviewing file materials so I can estimate tactical value, I learned that Center for Defense Information gives values for two PRC ballistic missiles CEP as "less than 10 meters." Congressional budget office is listing "less than 100 meters" while most others are listing much larger values. Other sources indicate that the latest marks were revised for accuracy, and to carry up to 6 kinds of warheads, including those for targeting fuel depots, runways, and warships. One of the six is an EMP weapon. The older missiles (in the case of DF-15 anyway) were refitted to the newer (G for Golf) standard. While I found explicit reference to the dual GPS guidance, it appears this is only one element of the guidance packages. Probably a missile goes to a "box" and then uses terminal homing of another kind, if the target is not stationary. All these shorter and medium range weapons were transferred to 31 Group Army, a convetinoal ground force with amphibious focus. I interpret this to mean the weapons have non-nuclear warheads and are intended for operational support of the army operations in a invasion situation, particularly suppression of enemy air operations by attacks on bases and critical infrastructures. But I didn't realize there was an explicit option to attack ships at sea - just like the captain of Vincennes said Even so - there is something strange. One report indicates the 1996 tests were not (as virtually every source said) M-11, but the M-18 variant. And the tracks shown in the Proceedings article are wrong - that is the missiles came from a different base - Specifically No 2054 base in Hunan if you know your PLA order of battle. Now why would the good captain put in the wrong missile tracks. Curioser and curioser said Alice? Was it just art by someone at the Proceedings, or was this some kind of disinformation? The really strange thing is that the allegation of accuracy - wether or not it was achieved in 1996 - is borne out by later tests - at least for two families. And the others are much better than we thought.

Assuming the PLA is working in this area, I would still suggest "<10m CEP" is still quite optimistic even for RVs with some terminal seeker head / control fin design. Furthermore, if they're looking at various target types, I'd guess they aren't developing one universal warhead guidance package to cover all bases. Rather, they'd probably use a terminal homing design for relocatable targets like ships, and a different improved navagational guidance design for immobile (land) targets. Which missile is the M-18? Displacedjim

ElCid, as we've both posted before, the single biggest window of opportunity for the PLA opens if/when they gain an operational conventional warhead ballistic missile threat to Taiwan's IADS and our carriers. Displacedjim