Why no Western TEL ICBMs?

[Archibald]

Ok I'd like to ask a few questions. When in 1974 the Soviets started putting IRBMs and ICBMs on trains and trucks (from memory: SS-16, SS-20, SS-24 later) why no symmetrical answer from the USA ?

-was it just a matter of wrong timing - after Minuteman production run, before MX ?

-what were the political obstacles in America that nixed mobile IRBMs / ICBMs ? obstacles that seemingly did not existed in USSR ?

- Was it just a matter of USSR surface area being twice that of the USA, roughly 22 million km2 versus 10 millions ? and railways mostly away from large population centers, thinking about the Transiberian ? more places to hide mobile missiles, still away from major population centers ?
Or perhaps Soviet leaders much less giving a rat about their population fate in case of WWIII - not being constrained by democratic values - or, more pointedly - by civilian protests ?

 

[GTX]

Ok I'd like to ask a few questions. When in 1974 the Soviets started putting IRBMs and ICBMs on trains and trucks (from memory: SS-16, SS-20, SS-24 later) why no symmetrical answer from the USA ?

Dare I suggest: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...ntercontinental-ballistic-missile-sicbm.1076/

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Ok I'd like to ask a few questions. When in 1974 the Soviets started putting IRBMs and ICBMs on trains and trucks (from memory: SS-16, SS-20, SS-24 later) why no symmetrical answer from the USA ?

-was it just a matter of wrong timing - after Minuteman production run, before MX ?

-what were the political obstacles in America that nixed mobile IRBMs / ICBMs ? obstacles that seemingly did not existed in USSR ?

- Was it just a matter of USSR surface area being twice that of the USA, roughly 22 million km2 versus 10 millions ? and railways mostly away from large population centers, thinking about the Transiberian ? more places to hide mobile missiles, still away from major population centers ?
Or perhaps Soviet leaders much less giving a rat about their population fate in case of WWIII - not being constrained by democratic values - or, more pointedly - by civilian protests ?

I'm sure you've read the Echoes that Never Were paper on American mobile ICBMs.

Silos were cheap, lots of silos, and silos alone, offered economies of scale and were even cheaper; diversifying the basing structure by adding newfangled hard rock/south side silos, or mobile TELS on barges, trucks, trains etc would have been phenomenally expensive- you'd have huge new fixed costs for each new system, in addition to operating costs. A mobile Minuteman train had over twice, nearly three times the operating cost of a silo based ICBM!

Mobile missiles were not cost effective, and America had exquisite SSBNs for second strike anyway. Also it was the 70s and America was low on cash. They cut what was not absolutely essential. If they were going to buy more missiles, they would have gone in new, similar silos.

The Soviets were bad at cost effectiveness, and spent their way into bankruptcy; also their SSBNs were insecure, so they went all ham on the ICBMs and bought a zillion different idiosyncratic systems and basing modes.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA452153.pdf

 

[whatismoo]

I'm sure you've read the Echoes that Never Were paper on American mobile ICBMs.

Silos were cheap, lots of silos, and silos alone, offered economies of scale and were even cheaper; diversifying the basing structure by adding newfangled hard rock/south side silos, or mobile TELS on barges, trucks, trains etc would have been phenomenally expensive- you'd have huge new fixed costs for each new system, in addition to operating costs. A mobile Minuteman train had over twice, nearly three times the operating cost of a silo based ICBM!

Mobile missiles were not cost effective, and America had exquisite SSBNs for second strike anyway. Also it was the 70s and America was low on cash. They cut what was not absolutely essential. If they were going to buy more missiles, they would have gone in new, similar silos.

The Soviets were bad at cost effectiveness, and spent their way into bankruptcy; also their SSBNs were insecure, so they went all ham on the ICBMs and bought a zillion different idiosyncratic systems and basing modes.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA452153.pdf

Well, regarding SSBN security, the Deltas and later could launch from Soviet home waters and rapidly were able to deliver more warheads than the Yankees on station ever could have. Add in that the USN wasn't really invested in counter-SSBN until the mid-late 80s and never deployed some of the more unique systems required for under-ice operations, and (most) Soviet SSBN weren't quite as vulnerable as some might imagine.

Interestingly, had the Cold War not ended this might not even have changed much? AIUI Sea Wolf / SSN-21 was designed as an oceanic predator, not for littoral/under ice operations (though CENTURION was, and so perhaps that would have been the difference). Meanwhile the Soviets were going full bore into longer range and under-ice capable SLBM with R-39UTTKh / SS-NX-28 for Pr. 941 and Pr. 955 (the original 1990s design which eventually spawned Borei)

Sourcing for this is working off of Apalkov, Dmitri Kornev, Hattendorf's Newport Paper 19, and Blind Man's Buff

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Add in that the USN wasn't really invested in counter-SSBN until the mid-late 80s

Yes, but the USN also spent a vast amount of money on the Maritime Strategy, which had counter-SSBN at the core of the whole damn concept...

 

[whatismoo]

Yes, but the USN also spent a vast amount of money on the Maritime Strategy, which had counter-SSBN at the core of the whole damn concept...

Yes that's the turning point in the mid-80s!

 

[chimeric oncogene]

Yes that's the turning point in the mid-80s!

The Soviets were preparing their bastion defense early in the 70s - Kursks, Typhoons, Kievs, and so on take a decade to gestate.

The US Maritime strategy was concocted in response to apparent Soviet preparations for a bastion defense! The Soviets were seriously concerned about a US Navy incursion into their bastions well before Reagan.

And if we're being honest, contingency plans for attacks on bastions probably existed in the minds of US Navy Admirals a decade before Reagan turned it all into a catchy slogan for his defense policy.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Well, I hold the position that many light mobile ICBM are safer than a small number of heavy silo-based ICBM's. Mobile missiles are less vulnerable to possible strike, and since they could not carry too many warheads, they aren't very good as first strike weapon also.

Downside is needing a lot more security around a mobile launcher than a silo. (More equipment and people to do the work, I mean)

 

[Kat Tsun]

The Soviets were bad at cost effectiveness, and spent their way into bankruptcy

This is a misconception. The USSR would have gone "bankrupt" regardless because it was afflicted by a particularly severe case of Dutch Disease after the COMECON sanctions forced a shift from trending towards light industry and consumer economic development to resource extraction with European support. Had the West, or rather the United States, not been so afraid of mutual economic co-existence with the USSR in the 1970's, it very likely would not have had this happen and be better off economically, relatively speak. It would still probably vote to dissolve itself, too.

Anyway US mobile basing was mostly an issue with site security and the inability of American nuclear security officers to simply shoot protesters dead where they stood. It's the exact same thing that killed the White Trains which also killed Mobile Minuteman/Mobile MX, and saw the White Trains replaced by unmarked freight trucks, who work in conjunction with local law enforcement instead. In America, this is cheap, because local law enforcement is numerous and NNSA freight truck drivers would be expected to be dragged out of the vehicle before they shot someone for blocking a road or simply drove through the protesters.

In the USSR, the situation was inverted, and local security measures for mobile missiles were generally cheaper than building large silo fields. "Shoot them dead" is perfectly valid for a security officer of the Red Army to an unidentified person: it happened to MAJ A.D. Nicholson in 1984. It's why Russia has continued the Soviet trend of shuttering or downsizing silo fields, like Kozelsk, and replacing them with centralized mobile missile depots in rural areas: https://fas.org/publication/kozelsk-icbm-upgrade/

Downside is needing a lot more security around a mobile launcher than a silo. (More equipment and people to do the work, I mean)

The silos actual issue is that when they need to be inevitably replaced, it's almost certainly cheaper to shutter them, as they're very complicated buildings and if they aren't semi-regularly upgraded they tend to function fine until it comes time to introduce a new ICBM.

GBSD shows what happens when you defer lifecycle costs of a silo fleet. Trucks kind of demand semi-constant funding but their overall funding demand is lower, if they don't require elaborate security theaters or ecological studies, and even then I suspect replacing the trucks of a SICBM mobile force would be cheaper than GBSD.

Trucks will tell you when they need to be replaced which makes them less reliable, but a silo will refuse to accept a new weapon system which makes an entire arm of a triad unusable, so it's really easy for peacetime operators to defer costs instead of maintaining over time. It's how America went from having the most advanced nuclear missile force in 1975 to the most antiquated in 2025.

 

[whatismoo]

The Soviets were preparing their bastion defense early in the 70s - Kursks, Typhoons, Kievs, and so on take a decade to gestate.

The US Maritime strategy was concocted in response to apparent Soviet preparations for a bastion defense! The Soviets were seriously concerned about a US Navy incursion into their bastions well before Reagan.

And if we're being honest, contingency plans for attacks on bastions probably existed in the minds of US Navy Admirals a decade before Reagan turned it all into a catchy slogan for his defense policy.

It's a bit more complex than that, I can elaborate in a few hours when I'm back at my desk. In the meantime I could suggest reading Hattendorf's history of USN strategy in this period, linked below.

The USN flatly disagreed with any notion of a witholding (bastion) strategy for soviet SSBN until it received cable intercepts from IVY BELLS and the similar program to tap Barents cables. This is detailed in chapter 11 of Blind Man’s Bluff "the crown jewels" as well as the below talk by Brad Dismukes, who was at CNA at the time working on Soviet naval strategy.

The USN made a massive intelligence failure and was very wedded to SLOC defense and a mirror imaged view of the Soviet Navy until about 1981-84. Though given this was the era of ignoring signs that may have pointed them to Johnny Walker (as detailed in Blind Man's Bluff) it isn't that surprising.

Sorry for working off the top of my head, I'll write up something with proper citations later if it's not too off topic. This is the subject of a chapter in my Doctoral dissertation so I'm happy to talk about it in depth.

View: https://youtu.be/Fx3WkViMGxk?si=hgHlIcSs7dk12l1f

The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy

Our pleasure in publishing John Hattendorf's Newport Paper on maritime strategy arises from several sources. The Naval War College Press is pleased to republish and make more broadly available an essay that had become a standard reference work for those few fortunate enough to be both cleared...

digital-commons.usnwc.edu

 

[chimeric oncogene]

The USN flatly disagreed with any notion of a witholding (bastion) strategy for soviet SSBN until it received cable intercepts from IVY BELLS and the similar program to tap Barents cables. This is detailed in chapter 11 of Blind Man’s Bluff "the crown jewels" as well as the below talk by Brad Dismukes, who was at CNA at the time working on Soviet naval strategy.

Yes, but at the start, we were talking about Soviet ICBM/TEL procurement decisions. The Soviets knew themselves what kind of strategy they were pursuing; if they were guarding their bastions, it's because they were anxious about them.

And while official white papers will say all sorts of things, a few thousand middle managers, each with their own opinions, will say other things. Ideas don't emerge from the ether; there would have been all sorts of ideas tossed around the Pentagon for years on end before they made it to the official level.

It is quite obvious that the Maritime Strategy was a giant change in US Navy official strategy, but you had people advocating for it ages before it got to the Big Desks.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The silos actual issue is that when they need to be inevitably replaced, it's almost certainly cheaper to shutter them, as they're very complicated buildings and if they aren't semi-regularly upgraded they tend to function fine until it comes time to introduce a new ICBM.

GBSD shows what happens when you defer lifecycle costs of a silo fleet. Trucks kind of demand semi-constant funding but their overall funding demand is lower, if they don't require elaborate security theaters or ecological studies, and even then I suspect replacing the trucks of a SICBM mobile force would be cheaper than GBSD.

Trucks will tell you when they need to be replaced which makes them less reliable, but a silo will refuse to accept a new weapon system which makes an entire arm of a triad unusable, so it's really easy for peacetime operators to defer costs instead of maintaining over time. It's how America went from having the most advanced nuclear missile force in 1975 to the most antiquated in 2025.

Had not considered that point, makes sense!

 

[whatismoo]

Yes, but at the start, we were talking about Soviet ICBM/TEL procurement decisions. The Soviets knew themselves what kind of strategy they were pursuing; if they were guarding their bastions, it's because they were anxious about them.

And while official white papers will say all sorts of things, a few thousand middle managers, each with their own opinions, will say other things. Ideas don't emerge from the ether; there would have been all sorts of ideas tossed around the Pentagon for years on end before they made it to the official level.

It is quite obvious that the Maritime Strategy was a giant change in US Navy official strategy, but you had people advocating for it ages before it got to the Big Desks.

Yeah, without getting too off topic we know who was advocating it, Hattendorf digs into this, it's mentioned in Blind Man’s Bluff and Dismukes discusses it. We also know it was stonewalled for ≈a decade. Anyway, I don't want to drag the thread off topic.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Ok I'd like to ask a few questions. When in 1974 the Soviets started putting IRBMs and ICBMs on trains and trucks (from memory: SS-16, SS-20, SS-24 later) why no symmetrical answer from the USA ?

Because a symmetrical response doesn't actually make sense here. The answer to an enemy having survivable mobile missiles isn't to develop your own - it's to develop a way to find and destroy them.

In the case of the United States, the answer to the USSR's mobile missiles was the B-2, which was designed to penetrate the Soviet IADS and hunt down TELs.

It is quite obvious that the Maritime Strategy was a giant change in US Navy official strategy, but you had people advocating for it ages before it got to the Big Desks.

My view is that the Maritime Strategy was actually a return to the USN's 1945-196x strategy, which was abandoned because of (a) the emphasis on ASW to refight the Battle of the Atlantic and (b) the failure of AAW to keep pace with the threat posed by Soviet long-range aviation.

 

[Desertfox]

The proper way to do a US road-mobile system is to go with the shell game and hardened shelters. Say 200 missiles with 5 shelters each is 1000 targets. If the missile is housed in a tractor trailer, then decoys are cheap and plentiful. Providing security for a fixed sites is easier than a mobile one and its cheap to increase target load by simply adding more shelters, with the added advantage that you can still deploy using the US interstate system and function as a fully mobile system in an extreme case scenario.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The proper way to do a US road-mobile system is to go with the shell game and hardened shelters. Say 200 missiles with 5 shelters each is 1000 targets. If the missile is housed in a tractor trailer, then decoys are cheap and plentiful. Providing security for a fixed sites is easier than a mobile one and its cheap to increase target load by simply adding more shelters, with the added advantage that you can still deploy using the US interstate system and function as a fully mobile system in an extreme case scenario.

You still have to deal with security during the moves.

Which is a whole new level of paranoia. (Though it warmed my heart to hear that one of the idiots got dropped to the deck when he tried to leave the boat after the Marines closed the pier.)

 

[Kat Tsun]

The proper way to do a US road-mobile system is to go with the shell game and hardened shelters. Say 200 missiles with 5 shelters each is 1000 targets. If the missile is housed in a tractor trailer, then decoys are cheap and plentiful. Providing security for a fixed sites is easier than a mobile one and its cheap to increase target load by simply adding more shelters, with the added advantage that you can still deploy using the US interstate system and function as a fully mobile system in an extreme case scenario.

This was maybe true 50 years ago. Nowadays it wouldn't work, partly because the basing areas would be very obvious and potentially open to Chinese B-2/H-XX stealth bomber attacks in the Heartland, and partly because any hardened shelter or carrier is obviously identified from satellite photography or GMTI radar signature. Investment in a new architecture requires it to actually be new, not to be simply a way to bypass treaty limits on silo construction, or avoiding a disruption of Native American religious hillocks.

They would need to be something like a Peterbilt super sleeper, with a SICBM launch frame identical to a commerical truck trailer externally, then they can blend in with normal road traffic and be actually difficult to detect. If anyone tries to steal the truck while it's at a Waffle House, the airman in the passenger seat shoots them with his 9mm DOE, and you'd have a four man crew who rotate for 12 shift drives. Two weeks on, one week off, for six months.

Deterrent patrol pin, but it's a front aspect Kenworth flanked by two rockets with little electron orbits around the truck, and maybe wings.

That would be real work and thus too blue collar for the Air Force to even think about sadly.

 

[Desertfox]

This was maybe true 50 years ago. Nowadays it wouldn't work, partly because the basing areas would be very obvious and potentially open to Chinese B-2/H-XX stealth bomber attacks in the Heartland, and partly because any hardened shelter or carrier is obviously identified from satellite photography or GMTI radar signature. Investment in a new architecture requires it to actually be new, not to be simply a way to bypass treaty limits on silo construction, or avoiding a disruption of Native American religious hillocks.

They would need to be something like a Peterbilt super sleeper, with a SICBM launch frame identical to a commerical truck trailer externally, then they can blend in with normal road traffic and be actually difficult to detect. If anyone tries to steal the truck while it's at a Waffle House, the airman in the passenger seat shoots them with his 9mm DOE, and you'd have a four man crew who rotate for 12 shift drives. Two weeks on, one week off, for six months.

Deterrent patrol pin but it's a front aspect Kenworth flanked by two rockets with an atomic symbol around the truck.

That would be real work and thus too blue collar for the Air Force to even think about sadly.

So are silos and we still use them. With the shell game you can double the number of enemy targets while cutting the number of missiles in half, and all you have to do to increase targets is build more shelters.

TBF it works best when you are limited in number of missiles by treaty or cost.

 

[Kat Tsun]

So are silos and we still use them.

Because it was illegal for a long time to build them in Russia and America.

With the shell game you can double the number of enemy targets while cutting the number of missiles in half, and all you have to do to increase targets is build more shelters.

That's an incredible ask for a country that has trouble building matchstick homes, much less nuclear bunkers, to be honest.

America can afford to build a ton of trucks though.

TBF it works best when you are limited in number of missiles by treaty or cost.

No, it doesn't work at all, since the U.S. just put MX in converted Minuteman silos.

Russia is currently using a 1970s model of road mobile trucks in columns that are easily tracked by upcoming USSF GMTI constellations, RQ-180 P-ISR, and B-21 (or QUARTZ and B-2 if you want to be old fashioned) so it's also not likely to be super survivable. This is problematic for Russia as it relies on its land based missile force to be a peri- and post-attack force. A stealth raid by B-2s might kill their entire mobile ICBM force with sufficient TOT strikes by glide bombs.

Any "shell game" is vulnerable to this exact same threat: no surface bunker can be made hard enough to defend against Small Diameter Bomb, which is exactly what SDB was built to kill, albeit for housing H-6 bombers instead of ICBMs, and the Chinese will likely have very similar capabilities to the USAF c. mid-1990s by the beginning of the next decade. QUARTZ, B-2, AGM-129, and Stormbreaker are all on the table as possibilities for the PLAAF in intercontinental attack.

A deployment model, akin to OTR long haul truckers of SICBMs, would be the kind of radical thinking America needs to seriously adapt its land based ICBM force to the 21st century going into the 22nd. It won't be done, not because it's impossible or security reasons or whatever (we move warheads themselves the same way and DOE secure transports have little door holsters for submachine guns), but because the U.S. has the capacity to launch on warning rather than launch under attack like the Russians. This is because it invested heavily into dual phenomenology like SBIRS and LRDR and it continues to invest in this. This makes the survivability of the missile force itself less important.

If Russia had a true launch on warning capability I doubt they would be closing silos and shifting to mobile forces either, but they need something that can survive that initial 3 to 5 minutes or so of realizing you're under attack, ordering people to tell everyone you're under attack, and getting those orders sent out to the guys behind the buttons before they get blown up by stealth bombers.

Most MX basing options were based on unrealistic assumptions of Soviet capability and intent. Which is why they never went through.

 

[Desertfox]

SBDs are for hunting unhardened TELs in the open, not for hardened bunkers. And China is not about to have the capability to operate bombers over the continental USA, nor are they planning too.

 

[whatismoo]

SBDs are for hunting unhardened TELs in the open, not for hardened bunkers. And China is not about to have the capability to operate bombers over the continental USA, nor are they planning too.

SDB has a known hardened-aircraft-shelter defeat capability. The bigger issue is SDB-1 has no moving target capability, which is fixed on SDB-II by adding millimeter wave radar, laser, and imaging infra-red (though IIR and SALH probably overlap in terms of sensors).

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/133196/small-diameter-bomb-certified-for-operational-test-evaluation/

 

[Kat Tsun]

SBDs are for hunting unhardened TELs in the open, not for hardened bunkers.

...

It's a high length:diameter ratio hardened steel SAP body my guy. It was literally designed to defeat one specific, peculiarly Ba'athist, target:



Amusingly enough these shelters resemble those used by Soviet RSD-20 and Topol TELs!

And China is not about to have the capability to operate bombers over the continental USA, nor are they planning too.

Boy you're gonna be surprised in like 7 years when their stealth bomber stands up its first strike wing. H-20 is basically the PLAAF's B-2, with a range comparable to it, at 8-10,000 km. They only lack aerial refueling, for now, but that is going to change regardless of how the Taiwan War goes. It's something the PLAAF needs to actually utilize its increasingly modernized heavy airlift forces and strike bombers.

Anyway both of those make TELs in hardened depots or shelters infeasible for America. At the worst, the PLA could just copy Conventional Trident, and plaster a field with SLBMs packing two dozen Small Diameter Bombs each and save the nukes for the cities.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Boy you're gonna be surprised in like 7 years when their stealth bomber stands up its first strike wing. H-20 is basically the PLAAF's B-2, with a range comparable to it, at 8-10,000 km.

I'm not willing to believe that yet, the H-20 is supposed to replace H-6/Tu-16s so I expect H-6-like range and payload with LO. 9000kg at 7200km, give or take.

 

[Kat Tsun]

I'm not willing to believe that yet, the H-20 is supposed to replace H-6/Tu-16s so I expect H-6-like range and payload with LO. 9000kg at 7200km, give or take.

Yeah but H-20 is a large regional-small intercontinental type akin to B-1B rather than a super maximum like B-2. If the racetrack existed it would be in the Southwest and relatively closer to PRC than the Minuteman fields.

Shell game was dumb though so no one bit. The Soviets really just didn't believe in counterforce.

Build silos in Maine or something and China would never touch them.

 

[uk 75]

As the US already has the silos I suspect it will upgrade them to hold whatever emerges to replace Minuteman.
Any kind of TEL for US missiles would be vulnerable to protesters and terrorists in peacetime.

 

[Scott Kenny]

As the US already has the silos I suspect it will upgrade them to hold whatever emerges to replace Minuteman.
Any kind of TEL for US missiles would be vulnerable to protesters and terrorists in peacetime.

The US silos are in terrible shape, they're a primary reason why the Sentinel ICBM is way over budget. It's going to be cheaper to build all new silos than it will be to refurbish the 1960s era pieces of junk.

 

[uk 75]

The US silos are in terrible shape, they're a primary reason why the Sentinel ICBM is way over budget. It's going to be cheaper to build all new silos than it will be to refurbish the 1960s era pieces of junk.

I am not an engineer but isn't digging new holes in the ground a costly and sometimes difficult exercise.
What is wrong specifically with the existing ones?

 

[yeetmahboi]

I am not an engineer but isn't digging new holes in the ground a costly and sometimes difficult exercise.
What is wrong specifically with the existing ones?

The silos are ancient by now. If you want to drop an ICBM designed in 2025 into a silo designed in 1965 and barely upgraded since then...

 

[uk 75]

I appreciate that the control rooms and other equipment have to be replaced but are the silos themselves unsound structurally?

 

[Scott Kenny]

I appreciate that the control rooms and other equipment have to be replaced but are the silos themselves unsound structurally?

Some are. But it's really all the work to upgrade to current tech. Lots of concrete to be ripped out and replaced.

The comms wiring is also apparently a whole rat's nest of hacked and spliced cables going everywhere. Every time they did a test, they had to splice in the test patch wires, instead of having a computer network switch or whatever where you can just plug in the test patch gear without having to cut anything.

And neither replacing silos nor replacing all the wiring between silos and command centers was part of the original contract.

 

[Dilandu]

The silos are ancient by now. If you want to drop an ICBM designed in 2025 into a silo designed in 1965 and barely upgraded since then...

It wouldn't be much of a problem if USA were using encapsulated missiles - in sealed self-contained launch container, loaded into silo - but as far as I could understood, the Sentinel ICBM would follow the outdated practice of placing missile "bare" into the silo.

 

[Byeman]

It wouldn't be much of a problem if USA were using encapsulated missiles - in sealed self-contained launch container, loaded into silo - but as far as I could understood, the Sentinel ICBM would follow the outdated practice of placing missile "bare" into the silo.

A. not "out dated", just as many positives as encapsulated. Benefits such as the ability to access the missile without removing it from the silo. RV replacement is easier. Less complex.
B. Would require a cold launch and added complexity.

 

[Josh_TN]

Boy you're gonna be surprised in like 7 years when their stealth bomber stands up its first strike wing. H-20 is basically the PLAAF's B-2, with a range comparable to it, at 8-10,000 km. They only lack aerial refueling, for now, but that is going to change regardless of how the Taiwan War goes. It's something the PLAAF needs to actually utilize its increasingly modernized heavy airlift forces and strike bombers.

The big difference is that the PLAAF does not have significant overseas basing and that the geography of the WestPac does not favor unescorted tankers. Even if we assume every US and allied base is gone, Hawaii and Alaska are an annoying speed bulb that must be dealt with first. Furthermore, Y-20 is a much less efficient long range fuel offloading platform than a commercial based option. Assuming H-20 has B-2 range, which seems reasonable, the only way they are bombing CONUS in a first strike is if they are flying clear across Russian airspace. In fact even that might not be enough; I suspect the use of Russian air bases would be necessary given the comparative short range of Y-20 as a refueling aircraft.

That is not a completely outrageous proposition but it is a huge limitation.

 

[Kat Tsun]

The big difference is that the PLAAF does not have significant overseas basing and that the geography of the WestPac does not favor unescorted tankers. Even if we assume every US and allied base is gone, Hawaii and Alaska are an annoying speed bulb that must be dealt with first. Furthermore, Y-20 is a much less efficient long range fuel offloading platform than a commercial based option. Assuming H-20 has B-2 range, which seems reasonable, the only way they are bombing CONUS in a first strike is if they are flying clear across Russian airspace. In fact even that might not be enough; I suspect the use of Russian air bases would be necessary given the comparative short range of Y-20 as a refueling aircraft.

That is not a completely outrageous proposition but it is a huge limitation.

Absolutely. They also don't have the subs capable of transiting the Pacific quietly enough to unleash a Conventional Trident loaded with SDBs. But they have the capacity to fix themselves to the point where they can do these things. The PLAN submarine force is just waiting until they can make actual 688i and a 726 classes before they get serious about training. Surely that is what they tell themselves.

It's probably more likely they'll be able to cross with VLO bombers and LO tankers, in a Black Buck-type raid, if anything.

One single bomber that needs like 30 tankers to cross the ocean lol.

 

[Josh_TN]

I'm not willing to believe that yet, the H-20 is supposed to replace H-6/Tu-16s so I expect H-6-like range and payload with LO. 9000kg at 7200km, give or take.

I cannot imagine they would accept those limitations, but I also think the H-20 might have a much longer development cycle than other PLAAF aircraft. The PRC has never even built a bomber from scratch before; building an intercontinental stealth bomber seems like a vast leap. If nothing else the type would probably require a dedicated low-medium bypass engine design, and new engine projects seem to be the one thing that slows PLAAF platform development. I think that’s the reason we see “J-36” before H-20.

At the same time, I do not see how an H-6 sized range would solve their problems and I think they are shooting for much more.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Absolutely. They also don't have the subs capable of transiting the Pacific quietly enough to unleash a Conventional Trident loaded with SDBs. But they have the capacity to fix themselves to the point where they can do these things. The PLAN submarine force is just waiting until they can make actual 688i and a 726 classes before they get serious about training. Surely that is what they tell themselves.

That's not how that works. You need to beat training into your crews early, so that when you make the 688i and 726 classes your senior folks are already trained up well.

Merriman would agree with me, but I think he mostly stays out of this part of the forum.

I cannot imagine they would accept those limitations, but I also think the H-20 might have a much longer development cycle than other PLAAF aircraft. The PRC has never even built a bomber from scratch before; building an intercontinental stealth bomber seems like a vast leap. If nothing else the type would probably require a dedicated low-medium bypass engine design, and new engine projects seem to be the one thing that slows PLAAF platform development. I think that’s the reason we see “J-36” before H-20.

At the same time, I do not see how an H-6 sized range would solve their problems and I think they are shooting for much more.

Correct. So why not make a run of H-6 range bombers as aerodynamic and LO prototypes of the eventual intercontinental range bombers?

 

[Kat Tsun]

That's not how that works. You need to beat training into your crews early, so that when you make the 688i and 726 classes your senior folks are already trained up well.

I never said it was a good idea. I said that seems to be what they're doing. PLAN Submarine Force is like 90 Kilos and half a dozen different classes of single or double runs of SSBN and SSN.

Correct. So why not make a run of H-6 range bombers as aerodynamic and LO prototypes of the eventual intercontinental range bombers?

LO requires extremely precise manufacturing tolerances. That's why they're making J-20, J-35, and now J-XX before it.

Everything else is likely determined by the need to conduct unrefueled round-trip strikes against Guam and mid-oceanic CVBGs.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I never said it was a good idea. I said that seems to be what they're doing. PLAN Submarine Force is like 90 Kilos and half a dozen different classes of single or double runs of SSBN and SSN.

Which is why the PLAN sub force is going to be terrible for a long time...

LO requires extremely precise manufacturing tolerances. That's why they're making J-20, J-35, and now J-XX before it.

Everything else is likely determined by the need to conduct unrefueled round-trip strikes against Guam and mid-oceanic CVBGs.

Right, and that is also why it'd make sense to make a large airframe, even bigger than the 36011, to make sure that their manufacturing processes scale up while holding the required tolerances.

 

[Josh_TN]

Submarine wise, the PLAN has an uphill battle: anything it does in blue water is already being observed by their opponents. It is a paradox that while the PRC has a ‘backyard advantage’ in terms of distance, it has has a huge liability in terms of ‘home field advantage’: the U.S. and its allies have been operating in those waters routinely since 1945, and the geography (and wolf warrior diplomacy) hem the PLAN into a small area well patrolled by its opponents. Training and weapons testing in deep water also must be incredibly difficult to do without giving the U.S. a treasure trove of intelligence. I cannot imagine how nerve wracking shake down cruises are, knowing you are almost certainly being followed.

Also when it comes to having nuke boats, having an obviously inferior sub vs sub combat capability is incredibly expensive and inefficient. Simply building more less effective units does not greatly magnify their effects compared to other platform types that can achieve success with shear weight of numbers.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Which is why the PLAN sub force is going to be terrible for a long time...

The main issues that are corrigible are manufacturing. Until that improves, no matter how good the crews, the submarine force will be bad.

Right, and that is also why it'd make sense to make a large airframe, even bigger than the 36011, to make sure that their manufacturing processes scale up while holding the required tolerances.

The U.S. started with F-117 and was able to produce a viable combat airframe in about half the time it took to make B-2. It took about 8 years from '75 to '83. Something like B-2 likely requires two to three times as long (15-25 years) to gestate fully. OTOH, H-20 has probably been in industrial work since the late oughties, so we can expect it within the next 5 years or so (including this year).

They're capable of doing it and my totally unbiased opinion is we'll see the first airframe within 30 months.

The question is whether war will come before then.