China's nuclear arsenal could be up to FORTY times bigger than thought

While surfing the World Wide Web of Gloom and Doom earlier today I came across two rather interesting and related stories. The first is probably the most News worthy but the second might be related considering the two countries involved.

First off.

Apparently some Georgetown students may have just blown the lid off of one of China's best kept military secrets recently. If true then the Cat is way the hell out of the bag on this one!

China's nuclear arsenal could be up to FORTY times bigger than thought, three-year study of secret documents reveal

* Georgetown University student spent three years translating secret military documents and blogs

* Focus of research centred on 3,000 miles of underground tunnels dug by Second Artillery Corps

* Investigation launched after 2008 earthquake in Sichuan revealed existence of collapsed tunnels

* Study claims China could have as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads - far more then current estimates of between 80 and 400

China's nuclear arsenal may be many times larger than estimates suggest, a group of students have claimed after three years of painstaking researching through restricted documents.

Led by a former top Pentagon official, the students at Georgetown University, in Washington DC, have scrutinised satellite imagery, translated Chinese military documents and filtered through thousands of online files.

The focus of their extensive research has been the thousands of miles of underground tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps to hide China's missile arsenal.

I'll also provide a couple of other sources discussing the same story...

Georgetown Students Expose China's Nuclear Weapons Secrets

China may have 3,000 nuclear warheads: US report


Secondly.

Now, As if that wasn't eye opening enough. The recent release of this story started me thinking. India is the next regional Nuclear power. Were they aware of this possibility? Strangely enough India has recently stated they are now going to test a new missile which for the first time puts most of China within the range of it's Nuclear Arsenal...

China In India's Missile Range

New Delhi risks upsetting Asia’s delicate weapons balance

Sometime over the next three months,perhaps as early as December, Indian defense officials are scheduled to test the country‘s first truly intercontinental ballistic missile, the Agni-V, which theoretically brings India’s weapons program within range of most of China.

Officials insist that India has a no-strike-first policy and that the weapons are no threat to any other country in the region. Said VK Saraswat, the chief of the Defense Research & Development Organization, the federal body that oversees the country’s indigenous arms development: “We are not looking at how many missiles China or Pakistan has. With a 'no first-use' nuclear weapons policy, we only want a sufficient number of missiles to defend the country in the event of a crisis. Ours is a defensive-mode strategy, even if others have offensive postures.”

"New Delhi risks upsetting Asia’s delicate weapons balance"

If the first story is true and I'm leaning towards that very real possibility simply because the rate that China has been expanding both it's economy and military spending and the advancements they have been making in their space program etc. The "delicate weapons balance" is not only upset but damn near nonexistent. Arms race in Asia? Stay tuned people.


Maybe the worlds two peace prize winners Putin and Obama should step in and show India and China how peace is made

300 / 3000 /300000 doesn't really matter does it, if any of the major super powers fire just one in anger at the others we are all dead.....
But a good find fella

This doesn't surprise me.
I highly doubt the U.S. and Russia are disclosing accurate information as well.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
300 / 3000 /300000 doesn't really matter does it, if any of the major super powers fire just one in anger at the others we are all dead.....
But a good find fella

Great post here! Seriously, I have never understood the continued production of warheads, when there are so many world wide that we could destroy the earth a few times over. Has there ever been an official reason why having so many is better than having enough?

And we paid for them, one Walmart sale-a-bration at a time.

Slayer, nothing surprises me anymore. Am I worried? Nope. This has all been planned out from the beginning of time brother; we're just along for the ride.

reply to post by ChachiArcola

Thanks and I agree with you, it seems to me that when the production of weapons went silly and they all made enough bombs to blow up the planet 100 times over it was like school yard stuff IE "Well my country has 500 nuclear bombs" "yeah well mine has 1000 so ner ner ner ner nerrrrr".
Also don't forget that the companys making and selling the bombs make a whole lot of money from them.

The biggest problem is. If you have 3000 nuclear bombs eventually you will need to neutralise them and make them safe and that will cost $bn's. The other choice is to use them!

I can't find the entire speech given by Mr. Chi Haotian (Army General), Minster of Defense and vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission when he said the following:

We have made a tremendous effort to construct “The Great Wall Project” to build up, along our coastal and land frontiers as well as around large and medium-sized cities, a solid underground “Great Wall” that can withstand a nuclear war.

I believe the tunnels Slayer is speaking about is the, "solid underground "Great Wall" that can withstand nuclear war. Everyone who doubts China is planning a war to take the US and Austrailia with the use of bioweapons should read his speech in it's entireity.

There is a discussion of the speech here:
ATS Thread

Here is the speech:
Speech Source

Unedited Version

reply to post by smint


Agreed.

How many times do we really need to reduce a country's Capital to ashes? Both the US and Russia have over the past couple of decades have been drastically reducing their Nuclear arsenals.





Russia and US begin nuclear talks

Russia and the US have been holding the first of three days of talks in Moscow on a new treaty aimed at reducing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Senior diplomats need to negotiate a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start I) of 1991, which expires on 5 December.

The main sticking points are limits on the number of warheads and whether the treaty will cover bombers and missiles.

The Chinese mind-game is inscrutable. The posturing--of the last two years especially--points to a confidence that probably does include weapons capability we are unaware of.

Our intelligence agencies are pretty good at setting-up and manipulating missions objectives and public perception for their sorties, but seem to really suck when it comes to basic intelligence like this.

"No, fellas, Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, but China has a few more thousand nuclear warheads than you thought."

Signed

Some Students.

reply to post by The GUT




Yeah I thought that was pretty funny myself. "Some Students" were doing some "Homework" for 3 years is how one of the articles put it.

I think my biggest question comes in what kind of Nuclear warheads do they have in such massive numbers? If these are the high kiloton to megaton yield weapons, I really must ask myself what part of crazy did the Chinese miss about the few decades of arms race the Soviets and Americans wasted time and treasure on? How many times must we be capable of obliterating every trace of life outside the Oceans on our planet?

On the other hand...If they have thousands of low yield tactical weapons....I'm going to get a very deep and profound sick feeling while I strongly and fervently hope Obama stops pissing them off just for the apparent sport of it.

Just as one never need fear the man with MANY big nuclear weapons, they must fear the man who has only 1.....the reverse is true for the battlefield tactical nukes. A nation with a few of them won't waste them easily. A nation with mountains of them has every intention of using them as front line weapons systems in the next war. China never has seen much problem in body counts with many 0's on the end when it comes to actual warfare...it won't surprise me to learn that doctrine extends to the nuclear arm of the equation.

So.... crowd pleasers and city killers or little poppers to change the face of modern warfare at the battlefield level? Inquiring minds probably don't really want to know, to be honest....but we really need to, I suppose.

reply to post by spirit_horse



Thanks for providing those two links. I missed the thread somehow but had read a little about the Speech that was given. Reading them both now.

Who gives a crap..their people are dying from their own pollution anyway..let them have some more nuclear waste issues to deal with...yeah keep building up an army when you have all of these nuclear weapons...if they proceed the same way we do with war all this high tec crap in the long run means nothing in the long run because nobody is going to use it...we see how ashes from a volcano circle the world just imagine how several nuclear clouds will fair...this is all just so rediculous and all this fear mongering means more money thrown into the military..

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I think both the Soviets/Russians and Americans played around with the idea of battlefield nukes. The end result is a bunch of dead or radiation drenched dying soldiers and useless equipment even if their electronics had been hardened against the obvious release of massive EMPs

Originally posted by boymonkey74
300 / 3000 /300000 doesn't really matter does it, if any of the major super powers fire just one in anger at the others we are all dead.....
But a good find fella

You might be dead - I don't know what your situation is, I won't be, because I don't plan on being next to anything valuable enough to blow up.

reply to post by SLAYER69


If all the Chinese junk I've bought recently is an indicator, I'd have to worry about the possibility of these things going off if somebody looks at 'em wrong... or that they'd just be duds. Anyway, I hope they have higher standards in the construction of their military hardware than in the crap we buy from W---mart.

reply to post by SLAYER69


This does not come as a surprise. Asian peeps I know tend to conceal their power. Unlike the west that seems to like to show everything it has. I hope the East does not end doing things the same way we have in the west for the last hundred years. Cas I have a feeling if they did they would be better at is than us.... Although relatively peaceful outside there own borders when the dragon moves the world will no about it.
Look what happened under the rule of Mao.. 40 million plus souls dead. It makes the genocide in the second world war look like childs play...
On a side note.. How good would a missile defence shield be with thousands of missles thrown at it.. God Forbid it should ever happen.. I would guess a few would get through and that is all it takes..

Part of the reason for multiple warheads is not to destroy one country over and over again, its that the confidence in the US missile defenses is rather high, and as some of the WIKI leaks docs showed China and Russia believe the only way to actually hit the US is to throw as many nukes at the Missile shield as they can and HOPE some get through.

Anyone remember when we shot down that Sat from a Navy vessel? thats far beyond any others ability to do, works for a Sat will work for an Intercontinental ballistic missile.

reply to post by wtbengineer



Let's not forget how China was caught "Red" handed under the Clinton Administration stealing sensitive missile technology and got a get out of jail free card. Nothing ever really came of the "Investigation" and the US public quickly forgot about the incident...

Meanwhile, a few short years later China's manned space program [Which was in the crapper & Decades behind both the US and Russian programs] suddenly made great advances....