NRao wrote:Shiv,
I think the two sides are separated by if a TN is needed for deterrence.
The www via Googla uncle has quite a few references to Chinese nuclear weapons.
I chose one at random - based on language that I can understand.
http://www.nti.org/db/china/wdepdat.htmThis source says China has 400 nuclear warheads. But another source - the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has revised that estimate to about 250 or so.
Also from the above source (which please see)
China has tested and deployed six nuclear warhead designs:
a 20-40 kiloton (kT) fission gravity bomb
a 20 kT missile warhead
a 3+ megaton (MT) thermonuclear missile warhead
a 4-5 MT warhead for the DF-5 ICBM
a 3+ MT thermonuclear gravity bomb;
a 200-300 kT warhead possibly for the for the DF-31 and DF-41 and JL-2 SLBM.
China apparently has about 300 gravity dropped bombs to be delivered by aircraft ranging from 10 kt to 3 MT
The same source says China has about 90 missiles capable of carrying one warhead each of 3.3 megatons, and 500 missiles capable of carrying 50-350 kt warheads.
All sources about this are Western and they tend to count only what is aimed at the US. Technically all can be aimed at india, although China IMO is likely to "reserve" some to be aimed at the US. China's biggest headache
The same source has tables that show China as possessing some 600 odd missiles of which 50 have ranges of 200 to 600 km. These would have to be fired from the border into India - and would have to be moved into Tibet - to target areas in India which are 200-400 km from the border China has about 150 missiles that can hit any part of India.
It also has 150 nuke capable bombers that can drop gravity bombs =- but in terms of hiting India they would have to take off from Tibet bases - or inland bbases and be refuelled.
From all this is is difficult to reach a precise estimate of megatonnage that can be used against India. For reasons that I have mentioned in earlier posts calculating area of damage by megaton bombs gives smaller values than if you use kiloton bombs - i.e Ten 100 kt bombs can take out a greater area than one 1 megaton bomb - so it would be worth the effort to calculate exactly what China may have to throw at India and exactly where it would hurt most.
Here are some stats
India total land area 3.3 million sq km. When I start looikng at the individual areas of 20 major cities I find that the total areas are huge with Delhi being listed as 1800 sq km and Greater Mumbai as 480 sq km. For ease I am assuming 20 biggest Indian cities to have a core central area of 200 sq km and that leaves 4,000 square km of area to be hit Using my own paradigm that only 25% of a city area needs to be hit to cause unbearable pain, China still needs to destroy 1,000 sq km of city area. Taking 1 megaton nuke as capable of destroying 120 sq km we get an estimate of about 40 x 1 megaton nukes to be aimed at 20 cities in India to take 25% of the central areas of those cities. To destroy completely the major central areas of 20 cities in India, China would need 4 times that number - i.e 160 x 1 megaton nukes - which is a number that puts China's total arsenal and long range missile force under some stress.
Note that all this destruction would leave central areas of 20 Indian cities totally destroyed even as China uses up much of its arsenal. Still only about 4,000 sq km of India would have been destroyed - representing less than 1% of India's land area. Assuming 100 million dead and injured India would still have 90% or more of its land area safe for inhabitation and 90% of its population alive. And none of India's retaliatory nuclear force will be based in the centers of cities - leaving them largely intact.Chances are that China will reserve only 25% of its force for cities and maybe another 25% or more to target Air bases ad missile sites. But each of those form smaller targets and using 1 MT bombs would be a waste and China would rapidly run out of bombs and still not be able to hit much. If India's retaliatory forces are dispersed in 150 different locations outside cities, China will have to hit all of them and would have to know their precise locations. Each hit with a nuke on the wrong location is one nuke less for them - because any Indian nuke that survives is destined only for the center of a Chinese city.
That begs the questions
1) Just how much damage can anyone hope to achieve with nukes?
2) Just how much damage does one need to achieve?
3) What does one need to deter?
The expression "Glass parking lot" is great rhetoric - just like "rolling thunder" and "carpet bombing". Interestingly all are imported from the US.
JMT in a hurriedly compiled post