Could we take out China's nuclear capabilities with a first strike?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by b etor
which makes me 43.

Is this stupid "joke" still going on?

To me, you are ALL fictious characters. If someone wants to be a teen girl on here, I'll go with that. If they say they are a 22 year old homosexual crossdresser, I'll go with that . heck if they say they really are "Mork from Ork-- I won't dispute THAT either.

Whether people are really what they say ?? Frankly I don't care

[Wezil]

Go to school b etor.

Real teenagers have school.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Now, to make an actual guess, I'd hazard that Chinese missile preparedness is not necessarily everything you might expect it to be. I would give a US first strike a significantly greater than 50/50 chance of taking out all of the Chinese missiles capable of hitting the US before they could launch. When you include the very real possibility of launch failure, flight failure and command and control failure, I would say that the Chinese would have a 10% chance or less of actually vapourising a US city.

I think this argument is sound, except that in a situation where it were likely that we would try to take out China's nuclear capabilities, it's highly likely they would ... upgrade their preparedness

The hard part with nukes (once you have the tech to build ICBMs) is the uranium/other enriched product, which they have enough to essentially have MAD capability assuming preparedness. Thus I wouldn't assume we could take out their entire capability

And I highly doubt we could get 20 B2s over in range of China without them noticing... it's much more likely we could get subs in range, but assuming they put a decent number of missiles near Tibet and whatnot, that wouldn't help enough...

[KrazyHorse]

You're understating the difficulty of building large numbers of launch vehicles capable of reaching across the entire Pacific.

China is probably in the process of doing so right now, but it's a long, difficult, expensive process.

It is taking them years to significantly upgrade their capacity. It does not happen overnight.

[lord of the mark]

Didnt China historically build many intermediate range missiles to deter the USSR? Assuming they have a bunch of those,it raises the question of whether the threat of China nuking Tokyo, or Anchorage, or Oahu, or all three is enough to deter the US from launching a first strike, even leaving aside the likelihood of something surviving that could hit the lower 48.

[LordShiva]

China's military capabilities seem to be consistently overestimated in popular perception.

[Drake Tungsten]

China's military capabilities seem to be consistently overestimated in popular perception.

QFT

[SlowwHand]

The thing about China is that if they were nuked, so what? They'd look at it privately as reducing the population. "Over there. That girl's university. Put two on it, please."

[Ecthy]

Interesting article. In that light, Russia needs a partner. Makes it easier to understand people like our ex chancellor.

[Solly]

Originally posted by Ecthy
Interesting article. In that light, Russia needs a partner. Makes it easier to understand people like our ex chancellor.

Schroeder? What do you call your proper chancellor, you know your version of Gordon Brown?

[Ecthy]

Why do you know nothing.