China test fires new long-range missile with the range of 8,699 miles

[blank_quest]

India will soon catch up with China-US, let the Domestic Arms Industry flourish India can be sure of Its Conventional Capital supplies.

 

[Daredevil]

It seems this news has some basis despite no official confirmation from China because the news appeared in Janes Defence weekly

 

[huaxia rox]

How do you figure out that an ICBM has a range of 8699 miles.

Wonder what is the source of the report.

becoz prc uses KM rather than the commenwealth MILE to measure the lenth which means its a 14,000 KM strike range ICBM in the report my indian friend....

but u r right i doubt the source as well.....in my opinion the whole DF-41 theory is no more than another myth like DF-21D AC killer........unless further evidence can be found they r just some WMD in iraq stories again......

 

[huaxia rox]

congrats China. Hope you dont mind us testing Agni 6.

never mind my indian friend.....its already the 21st century....u wanna join UNSC u got to have some thing like that.......

 

[no smoking]

congrats China. Hope you dont mind us testing Agni 6.

Not at all!
You know what really upset Chinese? Now matter how we explain, indians still believe that we were worrying about Agni-5 testing.
So, let's do it again: when you have a big guy holding a RPG at the corner, a pistol is realy not a big thing you should keep an eye on.

 

[huaxia rox]

what indians should worry if they really want is DF-21 25 etc or CJ-10 kind of stuff....or maybe PLAs excise in tibet.....but apart from taking advantages of prc conducting new missile tests so they can enhance their military development indians who know a thing or two should understand those long range missile tests r to protential conflict with the US......

 

[Broccoli]

Re: China test fires new long-range missile with the range of 8,699 mi

People are still going around with that W88 claim? Here is Richard Garwin's response to that from 1999.

But there are reasons why Beijing would not have sought to build MIRVed missiles in the first place. As stated by the Cox Committee, China has under development a mobile ICBM, the DF-31, which is a smaller missile than its current ICBM, the DF-5A. But, if the motivation for this mobile missile is simply (as suggested by both the Cox Report and the Damage Assessment) a desire to have a secure second-strike capability, multiple warheads may not be necessary or even desirable, since this would increase the value of a missile as a target in a foreign pre-emptive strike.

China's current nuclear doctrine does not require the deployment of large numbers of MIRVed missiles. The United States and Russia deployed thousands of highly accurate RVs in order to be able to destroy with some confidence hardened targets such as missile silos. China's deterrent doctrine requires simply the ability to destroy in a retaliatory strike a modest fraction of the population and industry of a potential enemy. Were China intent on developing a counterforce capability, it could long ago have increased its ICBM force beyond the 20 or so silo-based missiles that can now deliver warheads to the United States. It is likely therefore that the impetus behind the mobile ICBMs is (as the Cox Report implies) to make China's strategic nuclear force more survivable against nuclear attack by the United States.

Moreover, MIRVs are also not the optimal weapons if China anticipates encountering a U.S. national missile defense (NMD) system such as that currently proposed to protect all U.S. territory with hit-to-kill exo-atmospheric interceptors. Instead, China is far more likely to use effective countermeasures (such as light-weight decoy balloons) rather than multiple RVs on its future missiles.

The advanced features of the W-88 come at a price. Its narrow conical RV (the Mk-5) poses serious constraints on the design of the nuclear warhead that it carries. Either substantial payload capacity must be devoted to tungsten or uranium ballast in the nose of the RV, or increased development costs and compromises must be made so that the warhead itself is of small enough diameter to fit well down within the cone. The primary reason for such a narrow cone is to achieve very high accuracy on reentry, in the face of winds. Unless China's strategic nuclear force were to grow greatly in warhead numbers to a point where it could threaten the survival of the U.S. ICBM silos, Beijing would have imposed a significant penalty on itself by deploying such sleek RVs. Very high accuracy is irrelevant to maintaining a countervalue ("city-busting") deterrent.

In addition, as a practical matter, for China to replicate the W-88/Mk-5 combination would require not only major advances in nuclear weapons design and fabrication, but also in much of the ancillary equipment such as firing and fuzing, electronics and tritium gas storage. The impediments to small, modern warheads may lie more in these technologies than in the primary and secondary explosive packages themselves. For all of the above reasons, my own judgment is that, even if China were confident that it had every detail of the W-88 and its Mk-5 reentry vehicle, it would not reproduce the weapon.

Why China Won't Build U.S. Warheads | Arms Control Association

 

[Broccoli]

Re: China test fires new long-range missile with the range of 8,699 mi

DF-31 RV (470kg), certainly nothing like the narrow Mk-5 RV.