How many ICBMs does China have to hit the US with?
Say China invaded Taiwan, how likely will a war beakout with the US? If we escalate to nuclear, China gets glasses, how many ICBM gets through to the US? 50? 200? MIRVed or non-MIRVed?
How many ICBMs does China have to hit the US with?
Kayden Turner
Michael Gutierrez
Not enough to cause a comparable amount of damage vs what the US can subject China to. This disparity is worsened by the fact that so much of China's population lives in incredibly dense urban areas, making them much more susceptible to a smaller number of warheads. Not sure whether or not this would play into China's willingness to use nuclear weapons on the United States, but for the Americans, a nuclear exchange with China would be nowhere near as catastrophic as the one they were expecting with the USSR.
Jayden Reed
what a retarded post
Lucas Baker
It's true, though. The US and Russian inventories are simply on a different scale from the rest of the world, including China.
Cooper White
Right but China has like at least 50-100 ICBMs right? So say half is MIRVed that is like 150-200 warheads, so half 1 MT range and half 200 kit range.
I mean 200 warheads is still enough to wipe out every major city, military base, airport and power plant
William Watson
Why? He's not wrong.
China has fewer warheads, and fewer deployment vehicles with the reach necessary. Not to mention that the deployment vehicles available currently are junk. Their nuclear triad is being serviced by H-6K bombers and four active SSBNs that are so noisy that they stay at home to not scare fish away from their 2,600 Mega-Trawlers.
Parker Mitchell
China's nuclear arsenal is purely for deterring. A nuclear exchange is stacked very heavily in the US's favor. China has roughly 260 active warheads, the US has 3,000+.
China has 6 ballistic missile subs in service and the US has 14.
The US could soak up damage and the Chinese would have to decide to attack cities or hardened military targets (where multiple weapons or warheads are needed). The Americans would not need to make such a choice, they could remove the Chinese fixed launch sites, hit other military targets, and devastate the dense cities.
Adam Phillips
>50, 200?
Seems like all the learned estimates, a few fliers aside, seem to fall in that range. Dont trust the Chinese but I couldn't certainly understand how they might stick to a minimal credible deturance stratigy. They got into the game late and watched the USSR and US damn near go broke down the nuke rabbit hole. If I were the Chinese I would have 100 mirved Icbms and would work on countermeasures and penetration aids and leave it at that.
Hudson Thompson
>soak up damage
Explain to me how you can soak up 100-200 1 mt warheads. That is basically every major city and military base gone
Xavier Brown
rand.org
If you look on p.41 of this report, you'll see that RAND estimates that they have about 20 silo-based ICBMS and 20-45 road mobile ICBMs capable of hitting at least some portion of the continental United States. The rest of their arsenal is primarily invested in IRBMs and MRBMs meant to deter India, Russia, and other potential regional threats. It's from 2017, so the numbers are unlikely to have changed all that much.
Isaiah Martin
>50 to 100 ICBMs..
Lol, nah
>in 2009, was estimated to have under 15 DF-31 missiles and under 15 DF-31A missiles in inventory.[6]
As of 2017, there were about 20 operational DF-5 launchers.[11]
And DF-41 which is to replace both of them is still in development with only six tests and none operational.
They have 50 ICBM's
20 of which are so old that it makes Russia's old stuff look modern.
Sebastian Flores
(cont.) combine that with their SSBN fleet, whose ability to get within firing range of the US is at least somewhat questionable, and you have AT MOST and estimated 100 warheads that could hit parts of the US. (p.42-43)
Hudson Moore
>every major city gone
and nothing of value was lost
Josiah Ortiz
That's assuming all of them survive to get launched (which only happens in a Chinese first strike) and get through to their targets. Some targets would require more than one missile to ensure destruction.
It would obviously be horrendous damage for the US to have major cities hit but the Chinese would be suffering more at the end of it. There would still be rural Americans managing to survive on their resources, rural Chinese would be succumbing to all the things they have throughout history while being unable to import anything because all their ports are wrecked.
Joshua Gonzalez
>It would obviously be horrendous damage for the US to have major cities hit but the Chinese would be suffering more at the end of it.
/thread
Leo Barnes
He's not wrong about the number. He's wrong about its making any difference whether the Chinese has 3000 or 300 warheads.
whoever makes the decision to first strike against China will have a bullet in his head pretty quickly.
Nuclear weapons, past a certain number, are absolutely useless.
Zachary Brown
At least one per state and double it for any military impact 150-200
Charles Young
France and the UK keep enough to wipe out China or Russia. That's all that's needed as a backup to the US
Aiden Flores
>whoever makes the decision to first strike against China will have a bullet in his head pretty quickly.
Nah. Chinese population is very concentrated and giverment/state dependent. Just one nuke on the three gorges dam would alter the map of China from space and wipe out a 1/3rd of the population which is increasingly concentrated in a few cities over 90% of Chinas population is concentrated in a very small area, Russia is the same. Neither would exist after a first exchange other than as a tiny tiny radioactive ethnic minority, USA and NATO have very distributed populations and would continue to exist
John Stewart
>whoever makes the decision to first strike against China will have a bullet in his head pretty quickly.
Said the emperor of Japan in 1945 about daring Americans to do it again.
Nathan Howard
One nuke collapses our economy
The same applies to them
Won't be any nukes used
William Wood
Considering both the US and China has a no-first-use policy then there should never be a nuclear exchange in the first place (same goes for any other nuclear armed nation.) It's something I cannot see any state ever wanting to go ahead with.
The Emperor wanted to surrender once Nagasaki happened and it was understood that it was a new bomb, some of his generals on the other hand tried to stage a coup to prevent the surrender message from being broadcasted.
Dominic Barnes
The US does NOT have a no-first-use policy. Elizabeth Warren has been campaigning on changing that, though.
Julian Ramirez
China needs less nukes than America. America is rotting from inside, it will implode once an external pressure is added. Imagine all the lgbt parades clogging the highways and the nigger riots in the cities after a few nukes. All Americans are taking medications, they are very susceptible to any biological or chemical changes in their environment. Unlike Chinese which are naturally healthy and can adjust to post apocalyptic life easily.
Dylan Cook
Ew, someone get the bugspray.