[myrandomcomment]

15 mobile launchers which the US spends a ton of satellite time tracking anything that looks like one. There are 1152 warheads just on the current US SSBN. They would target anything that even looks like a launcher. Assuming half are on Atlantic patrol, that is still 576 warheads. 15 real targets and 561 guesses. The odds are pretty good.

As to the subs the latest China sub is the type 094 which cannot reach the continental US with their current load of JL-2 (7200km) in their current patrol zone. Also they are pretty noise and easily tracked. JL-3 (9000KM) are not in wide service.

The US has a further 10600 or so warheads on ICBM. China’s total count is around 400.

The logical game theory response is for the US to go full nuclear day 0. That is what every general and every theorist in the pentagon will advise the president. I am not saying it’s a good idea, but the logic is sound if you except the fact that the US would be unwilling to allow the dollars position to be challenged.

The leadership of China is pretty damn smart and they know this. I applauded them in playing the long game, something which the last few American governments have forgotten how to do. Our inability to think long term will bring us down, not China.

[sho]

There is no way, full stop, that the USA can track random trucks in China. Even if they could, of course they have nuke-hardened storage - we call them "mountains". And that's 15 we know about, who knows how many more there really are. My understanding is that the PLAN subs absolutely could strike the US. And it goes without saying that US forces in SK, Okinawa and Guam would be utterly obliterated.

But all of this is ridiculous. Yes of course the USA has more warheads. They could indeed cause catastrophic destruction in China. No-one said they couldn't. The point is that China can and would counter-strike, with devastating results. This is the whole point of nuclear deterrence. No-one believes they couldn't, except apparently you with your completely unrealistic fantasies about the USA's godlike superiority. The USA as you know it would be gone.

And you somehow believe the USA would trigger this frigging holocaust to protect its image, or the US Dollar? What Dollar? The Fed's a smoking crater. Just delusional.

[myrandomcomment]

Mountains and fixed silos do not protect much given the current CEP and over pressure capability of the US Mk5 Trident 2 SLBM that can reach China’s fixed ICBM in 10 minutes.

Here is a very detailed story on warhead guidance and accuracy and how harden targets are destroyed. It is quite interesting.

https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...

Every fixed ICBM location in the world is known to all the major powers. You can find a pretty good list on fas.org. It will including things like year built, what was the state of the art at that time, yield needed to destroy, etc. Also there are tons of research papers on first strike imbalance and launch reaction time done by well respected scientist and think tanks available on the internet. Reaction time is more important because most silos today cannot survive an accurate strike so you have to launch before the misses hit. If they could then why build mobile launchers？

It’s not tracking a truck, it is tracking a very large thing that is easy to follow that has to exit a know location for servicing over its life time. The NRO has 60+ years of experience tracking way more items then the 30 DF31/31A mobile launchers that China has. The USSR had 1000s for them to practice on.

This has zero to do with god like powers or some unreasonably belief in US superiority and everything to do with math and technology. The logic is very simple, a protracted conventional war with China makes no sense as it will end up as a nuclear war, so if a war starts a massive first strike day 0 is the most logical path. And yes, I do believe the US would do so to protect its place in the power structure of the world and I am a rational person who would love to see all nuclear weapons eliminated along with the need of any or us to maintain large militaries.

The planners do not think in emotion. They do the math and odds and there is a calculation that says an overwhelming first strike has acceptable risk and Guam, et.al. that the smaller weapons could hit are an okay trade off for not allowing a hit on the continental US along with complete destruction of Chinese forces. There are 1000s of people in the US Defense Department who’s only job is to calculate all of the possible scenarios, including this one and wrap it all up in a nice summary of casualties (explosion + long term fallout given winds, etc.) and probabilities of success and they do so without the emotional reaction that you have. It’s quite scary if you really think about it.