Which countries have nuclear weapons

Yusuf

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4 major cities of china have 50 million population. I am sure you think the Chinese will let them die. How many bombs will India take to target those cities? If the Chinese don't care about 50 million, then they will not care or 500 million. Then does India have the arsenal to wipe out 500 million? That's when you start to think like the soviets and Americans. Complete annihilation and develop 50,000 bombs arsenal.
 

The Messiah

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I wouldn't be surprised if we already have 200+ nukes.

But we will never confirm or deny it so that others dont know.
 

trackwhack

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4 major cities of china have 50 million population. I am sure you think the Chinese will let them die. How many bombs will India take to target those cities? If the Chinese don't care about 50 million, then they will not care or 500 million. Then does India have the arsenal to wipe out 500 million? That's when you start to think like the soviets and Americans. Complete annihilation and develop 50,000 bombs arsenal.
China is a country that killed close to 50 million of their own people through the cultural revolution and great leap forward. do I think they will be willing to lose those kind of numbers. absolutely yes. you should read PLA army propoganda translations. their ultimate objective is complete submission of every other people - economically, militarily etc. they will never achieve that aim but we should be well prepared enough to not become collateral damage if they go crazy.

leave all this aside, why do you keep dodging the question I ask you one every such thread. what is it that we know about deterrence that the P5 with much smaller populations to defend does not know?
 

pmaitra

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Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is not going to drain the country, we have enough spending power to maintain an arsenal of 200+ weapons. But the most important aspect is neither the number of weapons, nor the yield. It is the demonstrated capability to meet the claimed yield - which as much as you sugar coat it, is NOT THE CASE. This has nothing to do with being a fan boy.
Good point.

We need to make sure that if we design for x kiloton, our nukes actually achieve at least 0.95x kilotons, not 0.66x kilotons.

We have to:
  • Make our nukes reliable, i.e. they should do what they are designed to do, i.e. if they are supposed to flatten a city, they should not merely flatten a football stadium.
  • Miniaturise them, so that we don't have to build super-huge missiles to take them to a desired distance.
 

trackwhack

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One more thing, I dont listen to Bharat Karnad all that much but there is one thing he quoted that I will never forget. If it comes to a nuclear exchange between India and China - IF - will our politicians have the balls to retaliate knowing that China has 10 times our arsenal which is enough to cause far more damage than we can? This was a question asked by a Chinese general to Bharat Karnad one one of his visits to Bejing. I think he speaks about this in one of those Bharat Rakshak interviews.

All our discussions are around the deterrence factor. That neither nation will resort to a nuclear exchange. What if we cross that threshold? The skewness of the arsenal will simply result in a ceasefire initiated by India and in the process take o heavy losses in territory. Because we do not have the arsenal to get match the Chinese.
 

pmaitra

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India's claimed and reported nuke yields!

Reality check:

TESTDEVICEDATEYIELD claimedYIELD reported
Fission device18 May 197412-15 kiloton4-6 kiloton
Shakti 1Thermonuclear device11 May 199843-60 kiloton12-25 kiloton
Shakti 2Fission device11 May 199812 kiloton??
Shakti 3Low-yield device11 May 19980.2 kilotonlow
Shakti 4Low-yield device13 May 19980.5 kilotonlow
Shakti 5Low-yield device13 May 19980.3 kilotonlow

Source: Nuclear Weapons - India Nuclear Forces
 

The Messiah

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We should have enough nukes to eliminate atleast top 50 populated cities/towns in china and still be left with a few to lob at the pakis for good measure.
 

noob101

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Flawed argument, The Russians were numbered 120 million, with 10 million of them in Moscow alone. Russia's top 10 urban centers constituted in excedss of 40% of their population. 12 warheads was deterrence enough.

Our deterrence against China has to be one-one. Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is not going to drain the country, we have enough spending power to maintain an arsenal of 200+ weapons. But the most important aspect is neither the number of weapons, nor the yield. It is the demonstrated capability to meet the claimed yield - which as much as you sugar coat it, is NOT THE CASE. This has nothing to do with being a fan boy.

Once again, Indian nuclear weapons strategists dont know more that the collective wisdom of the P5. Look at that chart and please tell me why a country that will have more people than any other within the next 10 years still feels safe with that kind of firepower around and hardly anything to repel it.
Most of the urban centers in the USSR were west of the Ural mountains meaning they were very very far from china with mostly the distances were in the range of 10,000 kms..... how the hell was China going to deliver these weapons .... Chinese only recently got missiles that have that type of range neither did they have any aircraft that had that type of range to deliver the weapons even in the unlikely case where Chinese were able to penetrate and get that far there is no way the Russian Air Defense forces would let them through....Realistically speaking if the Chinese found a way to deliver these weapons, 1out of 12 hitting the target would be lucky in my opinion....... The only thing that China could have hoped to do was get some targets in Siberia even that would be somewhat a long shot because of Soviet air defense forces . Also the relations between USSR and PRC was very good despite some set backs in the 50's just as an example look at all the Soviet/Russian military hardware in the PLA , would it make sense to sell weapons to a country that would drops nukes on your cities?

On your second point 200 weapons are enough for India as long as development of long range missiles is being done... currently all of Pakistan is with in reach of India and most of China is also , soon enough we will have missiles that can hit Beijing........ Maintenance and security of these weapons will cost a lot of money as it is and if try to start one uping China we will be on the loosing side of the deal economically.....

Lets take this as and example.... Lets say I have a pistol pointed at your chest right at the heart would it matter if i had 2 rounds or 12 rounds in the magazine? either way you are dead!!!! Same goes with nukes
 

ALBY

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Its true that we have nuke so has pakis ,chinese ,israelis,amrikans all have.But what is the guarantee that unlike all other products that came out of drdo this nukes will work?
 

Yusuf

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China is a country that killed close to 50 million of their own people through the cultural revolution and great leap forward. do I think they will be willing to lose those kind of numbers. absolutely yes. you should read PLA army propoganda translations. their ultimate objective is complete submission of every other people - economically, militarily etc. they will never achieve that aim but we should be well prepared enough to not become collateral damage if they go crazy.

leave all this aside, why do you keep dodging the question I ask you one every such thread. what is it that we know about deterrence that the P5 with much smaller populations to defend does not know?
Then how does it matter to India as to how many bombs it has when we are going to get killed? Flawed argument. The idea of a nuclear bomb is to deter the other guy from taking us out. If he does not mind getting taken out, well we are all doomed.
 

trackwhack

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Then how does it matter to India as to how many bombs it has when we are going to get killed? Flawed argument. The idea of a nuclear bomb is to deter the other guy from taking us out. If he does not mind getting taken out, well we are all doomed.
because the best deterrence is mutually assured destruction. India currently does not have that capability. The US and USSR realized that and built their arsenal to meet that threat and level of deterrence. Wake up Yusuf, this is the new cold war. We have been trampled on before, we cannot and must not allow that to happen again.

Also, there is no point if you choose to pick just one section of my argument and respond to it. There are many unanswered questions in India's deterrence

1) Yield
2) Size of arsenal
3) demonstrated and credible weapons design
4) demonstrated and credible delivery system - no range, questionable deployment (not sure how many A3's are even deployed for get A5)
5) second strike system - not sure when arihant will be commissioned and by when a 5K range slbm will be deployed.

With all these gaps in our deterrence it is foolish to assume we have deterred a rogue country like China that quite obviusly consider us a threat worth neutralizing.
 

Yusuf

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Sorry, the US and soviets realized that MAD was not a good thing and started coming up with measures to reduce their arsenal.

And I believe that this is no "Maos" china who will sacrifice their population. The CPC is so afraid of its citizens that it makes all efforts to keep high growth rates. Deng changed the way the Chinese thought.
 

Galaxy

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India 80-100 nuclear arsenal is highly underestimated. I am hearing this since very long time. I am sure, We 've more than 200+
 

pmaitra

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India 80-100 nuclear arsenal is highly underestimated. I am hearing this since very long time. I am sure, We 've more than 200+
If you have sources, please post them.
 

Galaxy

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If you have sources, please post them.
Do you think, Anyone in this world have source of exact nuclear arsenal ? I don't think anyone knows it and that includes for other countries.
 

Yusuf

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P4 (US, Russia, Britain and France) have accounted warheads including number of missiles in inventory.

Rest are all based on intel and estimation of the respective nuclear industry.
 

Blackwater

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How come India is in the 80-100 range for the last 3 or 4 years...:rolleyes:

Somewhere something is not adding up...;)
we are not as committed and dedicated to increase our stock pile unlike Pakistan.

we are busy in ghotalas(scams),today only one more scam of 2 lakh crore comes up. :shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked:
 

pmaitra

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Do you think, Anyone in this world have source of exact nuclear arsenal ? I don't think anyone knows it and that includes for other countries.
Ok so you are speculating. I am not. I have provided sources.
 

Yusuf

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Ok so you are speculating. I am not. I have provided sources.
Any estimation of Indian, Pak or Chini arsenal by anyone is going to be speculative in nature based on intel and other assumptions.
 

pmaitra

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Any estimation of Indian, Pak or Chini arsenal by anyone is going to be speculative in nature based on intel and other assumptions.
Of course, but us speculating and SIPRI speculating are different, because, their speculation is thoroughly researched and more accurate than unsupported claims.
 

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