First, China's top general starts talking about nuking the U.S. if we attempted to intervene an prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Of course the talk by the general could be a Chinese effort to limit a war over Taiwan to Taiwan itself, by warning of greivous consequences if the U.S. struck at mainland Chinese bases which would be staging the invasion. Not sure if that would work.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is reporting its annual assessment on China. China is building up its forces, with plans to modernize its conventional forces with Russian weapons and revitalizing its nuclear forces by adding mobile ballistic missiles and sub-launched ballistic missiles to its arsenal.
In other words, China is building both its nuclear force and making its large regular forces larger.
Why?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Two possible reasons why:
ReplyDelete1) They are actually preparing to take Taiwan, by force if necessary.
2) They are creating a war situation to stimulate a withering economy.
With regards to nukes: wouldn't it be easy to arm a torpedo with a nuclear warhead so it could take out an entire carrier group with one shot?!
Arm a torpedo with a nuclear warhead - yes. In fact, it has been done. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, both the US and Soviets has nuclear-capable torpedoes.
ReplyDeleteThe hard part is getting close enough to launch them and survive the result. Current nuclear tactics favor usin longer-ranged cruise missiles instead.
You'd need a giant nuke to take out an entire carrier group. At sea, most of the carrier escorts are seperated by miles, even tens of miles. You could noth destroy all of them with one nuke, unless they were all tied up together in port.
You don't need to, anyway. If you take out the carrier, you've destroyed the reason for having the carrier group in the first place. The surface ships cannot project the firepower at as great a range as a carrier can, and they will have a much more difficult time protecting themselves from air attack.
But that's not the missiles the Chinese are building. Those missiles described in the linked-to articles? Those are city-killers.