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2003-08-07 East Asia

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Posted by fullwood 2003-08-07 5:55:01 PM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Ballistic missiles with conventional warheads are an expensive way to compensate for China's lack of offensive airpower. 450 missiles are equivalent to 450 conventional bombs, after which they've shot their bolt. Each missile costs at least $2 million. That's a total cost of $900m to drop 450 bombs.

In Desert Storm, we delivered an average of 2000 tons of ordnance daily on the back of 1500 sorties. Assuming the average bomb was 1000 lbs, that's 4000 bombs a day. Each smart bomb costs about $50,000, meaning the total cost if we had dropped only smart bombs would have been $200m. Each sortie costs about $20,000. The cost of 1500 daily sorties would have been $30m. Total daily cost of 4000 bombs and 1500 sorties = $230m.

Bottom line we can drop 4000 bombs for $230m every day for a month - they can drop 450 bombs for $900m just once. I just can't see how these missiles alone are going to do much of anything to Taiwan. During Desert Storm, we dropped 4000 bombs a day for 30 days to soften Iraqi forces up. I doubt 450 Chinese bombs are going to do much to the Taiwanese armed forces except get them riled up.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2003-8-7 9:43:39 PM|| 2003-8-7 9:43:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 This is just ignorant speculation on my part, but what if the Chinese put something more than just conventional high explosive in the warheads? If they do that, they will soon know the meaning of hellzapoppin if they deploy these little gems. Would they consider the non-conventional armaments option? According to Zhang Fei's math, conventional does not compute, except for standing back and admiring all the hardware from time to time. Just a thought.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2003-8-7 10:19:27 PM|| 2003-8-7 10:19:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 This is just ignorant speculation on my part, but what if the Chinese put something more than just conventional high explosive in the warheads?

Not unreasonable. Perhaps a W88 nuclear warhead, designed for use on our Trident II.

The information most likely came from one of the W88's assembly points.

Sandia National Laboratories, which builds warhead prototypes; Lockheed Martin Corp., which mounts the warheads on missiles, or the Navy, which supervises the process. Or, from Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos...

The problem is the access we give to the Russians on everything from guidance systems to the space shuttle and missle defense technology, which again flows primarily from Lockheed etc.

Posted by Anonymous 2003-8-7 10:40:54 PM|| 2003-8-7 10:40:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 This is just ignorant speculation on my part, but what if the Chinese put something more than just conventional high explosive in the warheads? If they do that, they will soon know the meaning of hellzapoppin if they deploy these little gems. Would they consider the non-conventional armaments option?

Taiwan is under the American nuclear umbrella. Apart from completely destroying any hope of gaining Taiwanese support, a Chinese nuclear attack on Taiwan could result in the annihilation of China, esp if we've deployed NMD. We've still got 10,000 warheads. 2000 of 'em deployed against the largest Chinese population centers would probably kill off 99% of China's population. I'm not sure the Prez would make that decision, but the Chinese would really be rolling the dice.

The Chinese may have gotten some of the W-88 blueprints, but I'm not sure that blueprints alone will help them build the things. There are a lot precursor process technologies that they don't have access to. In other words, they can make something that looks like what we built, but won't function like what we have in our inventory because they can't figure out how to make the parts to spec. For example, the Russians couldn't build very quiet submarines until Toshiba of Japan sold them the milling equipment for them to make ultra-quiet propellers in the late '80's.

Too bad the Wen Ho Lee investigation was bungled, though. On the one hand, he deserved to fry, and on the other, his execution would have served as fair warning to other scientists thinking of passing on classified nuclear research to hostile foreign powers for one reason or another.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2003-8-7 10:55:57 PM|| 2003-8-7 10:55:57 PM|| Front Page Top

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