How Nuclear Missile, Submarine and Stealth Bomber Capabilities Match Up | WSJ U.S. vs. China

After decades of lagging behind the U.S., China has been rapidly expanding its nuclear force on land, at sea and in the air. The country has increased its numbers of ICBMs, developed its nuclear submarine capabilities, and announced the H-20 stealth strategic bomber.

Here’s how Beijing is developing its capabilities to try and close the gap with Washington D.C. in the next few decades.

Photo illustration: Jacob Reynolds

0:00 Here's how the U.S. and China’s nuclear arsenals match up
0:42 U.S. vs. China on land: Minuteman III vs. DF-41 ICBMs
3:23 U.S. vs. China at sea: Ohio-class vs. Jin-class submarines
5:16 U.S. vs. China in the air: B-21 vs. H-20 stealth bombers
6:30 Takeaways

U.S. vs. China
This original video series explores the rivalry between the two superpowers’ competing efforts to develop the technologies that are reshaping our world.

#Nuclear #China #WSJ

[npc]

The WSJ forgot to compare how many balloons the two country has.

[GMATveteran]

Predictably, WSJ focuses mostly on equipment & next to nothing on nuclear doctrine & operations. A lot of the PLARF weaknesses cited by WSJ (e.g. the vulnerability of SSBNs) are of little relevance in the context of the PLA's "minimal deterrence" doctrine - meaning that it doesn't plan to attempt any surprise attacks (i.e. 1st strike) on an adversary, & it only has to respond w/ a sufficiently devastating counterattack to any enemy 1st strike attempt. That's why it has never built & doesn't need to build anywhere near as big of an arsenal as that of the US. Even if a portion of the PLARF's arsenal is neutralized in an enemy 1st strike, it will still have enough left to destroy enough enemy population centers in a counterstrike to ensure MAD. This is the rationale behind the DF-41 silos. Even if about a quarter of the 300+ silos are filled with MIRV'd DF-41 ICBMs, those silos alone be more than enough to make a US first strike impossible, regardless of how "stealthy" the Columbia SSBNs might be.

[rahulrathod]

It's a wonderful content by WSJ but the hard fact is you cannot compare nuclear power of two countries by equipments, once a Country is Nuclear State then no country can ever dream of military conflict with it like for example US has World Strongest Military Force but US can even not dare to think of invading North Korea.

[danjohnston]

With Enough Fallout There Are No Winners Or Losers

[briannjoroge]

Here is my analogy of this, two guys standing in a gas tanker bragging who has the most matches

[cowholy]

How can you blame the Chinese? If a country builds a bunch of military bases around the US, an arms buildup is inevitable.

[Pu-nishant]

USA defence budget is mora than India, China, Russia combined.

[ritemolawbks]

Great report, but @ [6:54], I think the narrator may have confused the words "deploy, " "employ, " and "launch."

[tomvolde]

I think it’s a US mentality that some things are only allowed by the U.S. and can only be done by the U.S. No other countries are allowed to do so. Thus, whenever any other country comes even close to the U.S., they would take it as a threat.

[muhammadishmamabdullah]

Showing a shadow of a Yak-130 (A Russian jet trainer and Attack aircraft) to illustrate the H-20 bomber 😂 Nice job WSJ !
BTW ! H-20 is rumoured to be just like the stealth flying wing B-2, perhaps a copy. Which could replace the old H-6s

[aotrieu]

Scary time we are living in. I hope these will not be used 😭

[luckyu]

WSJ can get photos of China’s nuclear silos, but China has to use balloons!?? 😂

[Americanpatriot-zotk]

You can bet the United States has space based nukes.

[zyilund]

We just survived a plague and now people want to fight a nuke war🙄

[unknowndoe]

Seriously WSJ, big point missed. No mention of hypersonic missiles, arguably one of China's bigger strengths and an area where they lead the Americans.

[bholdr----]

Maybe the concept of a nuclear 'triad' ought to be revised for the modern strategic nuclear reality/capacities, etc, as in, the cold war paradigm of ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers doesn't really reflect the current strategic arsenals of the world's nuclear powers... Which have some qualitatively different systems that some nations field, including:

-the old triad' of ICBMs, SLBMs, and conventional bombers, AND:
-road mobile ICBMs (as well as strategic cruise missiles like the GLCM 'Glick-um' which was deployed in Europe near the end of the Cold War, and which some analysts considered a strategic checkmate vs the USSR-, and helped end the 4 decades of MAD),
-manuverable hypersonic missiles/glide vehicles,
-stealth (as opposed to conventional) bombers,
-maybe even space-based weapons (currently restricted by treaty, but who knows?)
-doomsday weapons like Russia's Poisiden '100 megaton' autonomous nuclear powered UUV,
-and, (I hope not) something like a cobalt 60 doomsday nuke...

At least the U.S. backed away from such doomsday weapons like FOBS, EMP nukes, and the SLAM nuclear powered hypersonic radiation-spewing multi warhead cruise missile, in the 60s! Maybe others will (other than Russia, apparently! China has demonstrated a FOBS capability, BTW, which is qualitatively different and much more threatening/hard to detect and counter than 'normal' ICBMs...)

Thoughts 🤔?

[boosteddaily]

Thank you WSJ for producing quality content.

[ltkehgf]

China is a country with sea and road-based mid-course anti-missiles.
There are 30, 000 kilometers of underground nuclear facilities.
Because China was under the nuclear threat of the United States and the Soviet Union. (There are specific attack cities and how many nuclear bombs are assigned to each city)

[DB-ubwx]

It is awful to live in a time where a few crazy men have the power to end everything.

[psychshift]

The only thing to truly unite humanity if only for a time would be an external common enemy. But any external common enemy is leagues ahead of us. But in house squabbling isn't helping us.