China's nuclear capabilties are no where near what the U.S. and Russia's are. They are light years away from these countries capabilties in the cold war. They have no more than a few hundred nuclear weapons and the launch equipment to deliver significantly less to far away shores. China could certainly damage the U.S., but in an all out war for "keeps" the U.S. would lose a few cities....China would literally cease to exist.
Not the sort to see the world with rose colored glasses I agree that tensions with Iran are coming to a head. However, there is a new mood around, especially in Europe. Few in the US know this because of government/Owebama propaganda, but Libya's intervention was driven primarily by France, Britain, Italy and Canada...it was one of the first truly NATO initiatives and, through pressure from those countries, the US took a background role providing logistical support. Britain, and Canada had fighters in the arena before Owebama committed. I suspect that we will be an emerging trend. Not only are the NATO partners fed up with what happened in Afghanistan - a short term "raid" tuned into a decades long war -- the US can no longer afford to wage multi-trillion dollar wars in crappy little backwaters. As to China, the Chinese think and plan in generations, not years. They're emerging economy is dependent on the west. While they may be able to raise an army five times the size of the US, Canada and Europe, they still do not have the technological capabilities to win an outright head to head fight. Not yet. When they do move, not if, it will be against Taiwan. That's why they have built themselves a nice shiny new aircraft carrier.
You mean a refurbished 1960s era Soviet aircraft carrier thats more of a heavy missile cruiser with a flight deck than an aircraft carrier.
There is no winner in a nuclear excahange. Only lesser degrees of loosers. And yes, we actually have a very good idea what their capability is. We know the number of bombs they have to a pretty accurate degree. We also know the number of capabilities of their missiles. We have a good idea where their subs are (their ballistic subs have almost never been out of port, and never leave the continental waters of China). How? Well, a lot comes from our eyes in the sky. Then there are our aircraft (remember the Hainan Island incident?), and other assets, both open and secret. And a lot CHina simply tells us or the world, hoping to make sales of this technology. Actually, my handle has not a single thing to do with Nuclear weapons. It was something I got when I was doing jungle training in Panama back in 1987. Basically, I was tagged with being a Mushroom because my superiors were always "keeping me in the dark and feeding me BS". And my avatar picture is me at the White Sands Missile Range in 2007, doing my own impersonation of Slim Pickens on a mock-up of the Fat Man bomb. However, I can tell you exactly the effects of such a blast. At around 5 MT, the fusion core would expand to around half a kilometer across. Inside of this nothing would live unless it was DEEP underground. To a radius of about 3 miles you would have total destruction. Pretty much anything organic and not shielded would be vaporized or highly irradiated. Out to a radius of roughly 5 miles, structures would be heavily damaged or destroyed. Cars and even semi trucks would be tossed around as if in a hurricane. People in the open would die almost immediately, those inside buildings might survive as long as their exposure to the radiation is low (underground shelters). However, beyond 5 miles, the damage will sharply decrease. Parts of roofs blown off, windows shattered. Human survival will rapidly increase, as long as evacuation and decontamination can be conducted in a timely manner. By the time you reach 10 miles, there will be almost no damage at all. However, those in the downwind region will need evacuation and decontamination. Actually, if anything it is high. And you are listing the capability of a US Ohio Class submarine, not a Chinese Type 94 submarine. There are believed to be only 2 Type 94 subs operational, however they may have completed a third. Their weapon capacity is 12 standard J-2 Ballistic Missiles, each ranging from .25-1 MT. And while China has been researching more advanced SLBMs, they are not believed to have any in service at this time. And you are making a big mistake in trying to figure out the damage. Blast damage is not exponential in it's scale. Doubling the amount of blast does not equate to a doubling in the amount of damage. This has floated around for years now. However, it is made to scare people, not actually reflect the differences in damage between these different blasts. This is a much better one, which gives you an actual scale of the fireballs of differing blast sizes. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pjvKYClPp..._nuclear_fireball_sizes+tsar+nuclear+bomb.png It is 3-4. Chinese SLBMs are not large enough to carry more then that. The missile is not large enough for more MIRVs. This is not the massive Trident-III, but the smaller JL-2. And they do not have the decades long experience with MIRV that the US has. They have barely had the technology for a decade. You are hyperinflating the numbers again. It is believed they have between 2-3 Type 94 submarines. And 1 of those is believed to be in for repairs. http://www.defence.pk/forums/china-defence/123158-chinese-nuke-sub-accident.html And they only have JL-2 Type 1 missiles, 12 of them in each. That means from 12 to a maximum of 36 missiles. That's it. And MIRV is not anything like what you seem to think it is. You do not throw up one missile, and have 3-5 warheads strike different cities. The idea behind MIRV is two-fold. One, by detonating multiple smaller warheads, you increase the area damaged and destroyed. This works the way that Cluster Munitions work. Sure, one massive bomb works great, but many times hundreds of smaller bombs work better. Each MIRV lands within a short distance of the other. So while a MIRV tossed at New York will have warheads land in Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, they will not land in New York, Boston and Baltimore. The other use of MIRV is in trying to eliminate a lucky ABM hit from destroying everything. With more warheads falling, the chance that some will make it past any defense systems in place increases. Not really. Fallout actually tends to clean itself up in a couple of weeks and months. And the fallout pattern is not as horrible as doomsayers tell everybody. The massive 15MT Castle Bravo test produced a fallout pattern that stretched less then 300 miles. And most of these fallout particles are of very short half-life. Some of them even expire before the particles reach the ground. Most areas exposed to atomic blast fallout recover very quickly. I have been to Trinity Site, and the surrounding areas. It looks like any other part of New Mexico Desert. And the areas around Hiroshima and Nagasaki are certainly still inhabited to this day. So no, the bombs would not contaminate "vast areas". And it would not last for "many many years". One of the major contaminants in fallout is Iodine-131. And it has a half-life of just over 8 days. But you are half right. We can Obliterate China. They can inflict some damage on the US, but not anywhere near as much. Because for one thing, our industry and infrastructure are widely scattered. It is spread between cities like Los Angeles and Seattle and Chicago, to small towns like Dothan, Boise and Topika. And they do not even have enough nukes to destroy Los Angeles, over 4,000 square miles. If anything, Russia would back the US in this, not China. Those two nations have a histroy of conflicts going back centuries. And the predominant wind patters do not go from China to Russia, but from Russia to China. So we would not be "contaminating parts of Russia". And if China started it by lobbing a nuke at our fleet, I am sure that China would either jump in the "kill China" bandwagon and try to tear off a piece themselves, or sit back and watch it from the sidelines.
I hope this is being said with great sarcasm. They do not have a "shiny new aircraft carrier". China has not built a single carrier. However, they first started to look at building one since the 1970's. And they have been training their pilots on a "paint carrier" (an outline the size of a flight deck painted on a runway) since 1987. That was the same year their Commander-In-Chief ordered construction of a carrier to begin. And they have been saying now for over 10 years that construction has begun on a carrier (most recently in June 2011), yet this activity has never actually produced a carrier. But to get an idea, they got the Varyag (which is not even an "Aircraft Carrier", but a "Heavy Aircraft Carrying Cruiser") in 2000. It has taken them 11 years to actually make it operational. And it carries an entire 26 aircraft. In less time then that, the US built from scratch the USS George H. W. Bush, finished the USS Ronald Reagan, and started both the USS Gerald R. Ford and John F. Kennedy. Each of which carries an average of 64 aircraft. The average time from keel laying to completion of a Nimitz class carrier is 7 years, with 2 being constructed at the same time. China can't even convert a single Soviet era vessel in that much time.
To be fair...............the US has decades of experience of carrier building. This is all new to the Chinese...........and to be complete novices and reverse engineer a partially built carrier by a foreign country is some feat. I'am sure in the future the Chinese will be able to build carriers quicker, based on how they have manged to build other types of warship very quickly.
They have yet to reverse-engineer a single carrier. Their carrier is a refurbished Soviet missile cruiser. So I might accept that, if they actually build a first carrier. As of yet, they have built none. And it took the US only 4 years to build it's first real Carrier, the USS Lexington. That is from the keel up. So I find it hard to understand 11 years to refurbish an existing ship. That is not even really a carrier.
remember also that now both in Syria and in Iran they have installed those most feared anti ship missles...( forget the name of them off hand) the ones that can travel 2,000 miles per hour only 6 feet above the ocean.....the most feared anti ship missles on earth..........naturally thr propaganda filled stations od the US never talk about this.....if the US startd war in Iraq then half the US navy will sink! PS if I am not mistaken these missles were developed by Russia!
OK here is an article about it! Russia sends ship-killer missiles to Syria by Staff Writers Moscow (UPI) Dec 5, 2011 Russia, a key backer of the beleaguered regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is reported to have delivered supersonic Yakhont SS-N-26 anti-ship cruise missiles to Damascus despite calls for a U.N. arms embargo on the regime. The Russian Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified military source in Moscow as saying the 2007 contract, which reportedly involved at least two coastal-defense Bastion anti-ship systems with 72 Yakhonts, "was completely fulfilled, almost ahead of time." The contract is worth an estimated $300 million. Interfax noted that "this weapon allows coverage of the entire coastline of Syria from possible attacks from the sea." It isn't known when the delivery was made. But Syria's acquisition of the Yakhont, which Russia calls the P-800, has caused considerable alarm in Israel. The SS-N-26, with a range of 190 miles and a maximum speed of 1,900 miles an hour, carries a warhead of 440 pounds of high explosive, enough to sink a large warship. The weapon's nearest U.S. counterparts, Raytheon's BGM-109 Tomahawk and Boeing's AGM-84 Harpoon, are subsonic. The best French equivalent, MBDA's MM-40 Exocet, only has a range of 45 miles. The Russian delivery was carried out as Assad battles for survival against a 9-month-old uprising to topple his dictatorial regime in which his security forces have killed, by U.N. count, at least 4,000 people since mid-March. While international pressure
Wow, do you have your facts off! Their most advanced snti-ship missil is the Noor. It travels at around MACH .9 (685 mph), and an altitude of 6-7 meters. If it was feet, the first large wave would knock it right aout of the sky. And it is based on the Chinese C-802.
Ohh, Syria, not Iran... And that is the P-800 Oniks. And yes, it is really fast, Mach 2.5 (1,900 mpg). But it is of rather limited range, only 100-300 KM. And that is really not much of a threat to the US. That is because Syria only borders the Mediteranian Sea in the region. And there is not much of a US presence in that region of the Sea. The US has much more of a presence in the Persian Gulf. And Syria is not on the Persian Gulf. There are a few other countries in the way.
I did not say they would use google earth LOL but they do have military satellites which give real time info. The cruise or ballistic missile targeting is updated instantaneously ... GPS. The Chinese had cruise missiles with stealth and anti radar capabilities (purchased from the Russians) as early as 1999. These missiles do not have to make it "through" the screen. They only need to get close and by the time you detect them they are likely close enough. That was 1999 but since the designer of the US missiles have been selling China military secrets they have probably improved on that technology by now. http://www.examiner.com/public-safe...tealth-missile-program-helped-by-u-s-engineer China has loads of advanced equipment, planes, subs, missiles and so on that are recent technology (not 60's and 70's) you are talking out your butthole. There is no way, as Mushroom states, to stop ballistic missiles. Even by his estimate, which is way low, 84 would hit the continental US. There is a difference between projecting conventional power and projecting nuclear power. China has a massive ability to project nuclear power which improves every day. At best your argument is "yeah but we have more" which is akin the argument "you can destroy the world 5 times over but we can do it 10" The incremental advantage of US over Russian technology has an influence over whose fighter might beat out the other guys in a fair fight. When it comes to stopping a ballistic or stealth cruise missile the advangate is to the missile.When it comes to stopping a ballistic or stealth cruise missile the advangate is to the missile from a technology standpoint. Also from a technology standpoint the natural tendency over time is for technology to spread. Planes, Carriers, Subs and so forth get harder and harder to protect and the missile technology that threatens them gets more sophisticated at a rate quicker than the defenses. In the case of a hi tech nuclear capable missile .. a Carrier does not have a chance.
A few hundered ? You are dreaming. Estimates are at least 400 but some analysts suggest much higher. Regardless .. 400 is enough to wipe the US off the map. A single sub with 24 MIRV's .. each MIRV with an estimated 3-6 warheads is 100 and there is nothing that can be done to stop any of them. Then there are the ICBM - 4-5 Megaton monsters ... cant stop them either. Estimates are 18-36 of these (DF-5's) deployed since the 80's Then you have a bunch if newer ICBM's DF-31 and DF-31A's , 30 or more but again we do not know and these are MIRV's The Chinese have new Subs comming on line which will completely end this silly discussion. There is no way to stop an ICBM launched from China and from a Sub it is even harder. A couple of cities ? Dream on.
First off .. we do not know what they have. Second .. they will have more very soon so you might as well plan your life as they have it now. Third.. they have alot now that we know for sure. Fourth .. When they tried to resettle folks to Bikini Island a more than a decade later in 1969 "injestion of the radio isotope Cesium-137 through the food and drinking water was noted as a significant radiation exposure pathway exceeding the plutonium pathway" https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/w... Remediation of Radioactive Contamination.pdf Similar events were recorded in Rongelap when residents were relocated in 1985 No offense dude but you are way off on your radioactive fallout info.
First off .. we do not know what they have. Second .. they will have more very soon so you might as well plan your life as they have it now. Third.. they have alot now that we know for sure. Fourth .. When they tried to resettle folks to Bikini Island a more than a decade later in 1969 "injestion of the radio isotope Cesium-137 through the food and drinking water was noted as a significant radiation exposure pathway exceeding the plutonium pathway" https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/w... Remediation of Radioactive Contamination.pdf Similar events were recorded in Rongelap when residents were relocated in 1985 No offense dude but you are way off on your radioactive fallout info.
Bikini Atol and other tests of the era were all ground or near-ground bursts. They were also all done in an area surrounded by water. Blasts near water (especially sea water) are highly dangerous, because the radiation has a high risk when it mixes with the sea salt. Sea salt is very supseptible to combining with the radioactive particles, making new isotoped with a long half life. This does not happen with bursts over land. In a surface blast in the ocean, a huge amount of water is flash-blasted away. The water evaporates, and what is left is a lot of solid material (sea salt). This combines with the radioactivity (mostly Aplha and Beta particles), creating a lot of radioactive material which both loves to link with free particles, and has a long half life. Normal ground particled are much less likely to link with free radioactivity, so the amount of radioactive fallout is much less. ICBM's are not designed for surface burst. They happen at altitude, to increase the area of damage. And the vast majority of US targets would be over land, no ion attracting salts to link with. The average altitude of the Bikini Atol bursts was within a few dozen meters of ground level. Your average ICBM is fused to detonate at between 500 and 4,000 meters. A much greater amount of blast damage, a much lesser amount of radioactive fallout. Not to mention, the bombs of today are much more effective. The Bikini tests were the original Hydrogen Bombs. In fact, the first tests were horribly "dirty" because they did not yet know how little of a triggering blast was needed to start the Fusion reaction. Some of the original blasts were magnitudes higher then expected. Castle Bravo was a test that went far beyond what was expected. The concept was to create a 4-6 megaton blast. They had a core with over 4 tons of uranium, and boosted with lithium deuteride. However, the actual blast shocked the scientists. It created a fireball almost 4 miles across, and came in at 15 megatons. The flash was visible over 250 miles away, and almost totally destroyed the island of Namu. Modern Fusion bombs use a fairly small amount of plutonium and other fissionables, in order to reduce fallout and also to reduce size and weight. Castle Bravo was 15 MT, and weighed almost 12 tons. A modern Trident II warhead weighs in at around 800 pounds. Even the modern Minuteman II warhead weighs in at only 680 pounds. Some of the Castle Bravo tests used an insane amount of radioactive materials. For example, Ivy Mike used over 4.5 tons of Uranium. That created excessive amounts of fallout, nothing like the weapons used today. The difference between the warheads that caused the high amount of radiation at Bikini Atol and Enewetak and the modern warheads could not be farther apart. You really need to find some updated information on nuclear warheads, and what the cause of radiation is.
Great summary and I hope you are right. (that the nukes of today will not contaminate as much as the old ones) Does this really change the central thesis here though ? That being that there is no winning a nuclear war ? Put it this way. If the top scientists in China tell the Party .. "We do not have enough nukes to deter the US" Do you not think in the next 5 years that situation will be rectified ? There are other "fallouts" from the hypothetical destruction of China. Who would buy our debt and who will we sell stuff to ? Last year more cars were sold in China than in the US ! What we need to be doing is focusing more on making stuff the world wants to buy and less on puppet dictators. China will do what China will do. If they have not progressed to a point where they are confident that their military is sufficient detterent against US aggression they will get there soon. The last thing China wants, or any other serious contender for power, is a war with the US. One thing about athiests is that they do not have some pie in the sky delusions about some Rapture comming to whisk all the good folks away. It is the religious zeolot types that dont mind risking global destruction so much if it will bring forth the Kingdom of God or some such thing. There is no such delusion in China. Islamic wingnuts are another story.
not sure as I read it over a year ago......I just remember that in that agreement both Russia and China agree to protect Iran in the case of any conflict!
There's no way they'd intercede militarily in Iran. China couldn't even if it wanted to, and Russia would have almost nothing to gain and everything to lose.
This is why you need to do some actual research, instead of relying off of your memory. What you are talking about does not exist, there is no "Shanghai Agreement". What you are talking about is not the policy of either China Nor Russia. That is a quote from Chinese Army Major General Zhang Zhaozhong. However, the quote is CLAIMED to come from this individual. Because the same quotes are also given from an Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong. And any other claims that are used against the United States. Many people even question if he exists at all. The name is normally associated with inflamatory remarks and claims, and has no Government connections. And there is no "history" with this General/Admiral.
I am willing to bet you that if the USA invade Iran then at least China and Russia will provide arms for Iran to defend themselves...remember that China is very hungry for new oils supplies!
