The latest assessment from the defense department said China had increased its arsenal of operational nuclear warheads from the estimated 400 in 2021 to more than 500 as of May this year.
Anything more than a handful of nukes are nothing but a money drain and maintenance nightmare.
They can never be used without the expectation of massive retaliation in kind.
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kurzgesagt made a wonderful video about this subject
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I think you’re missing the point of MAD. The entire reason of having a nuclear arsenal is so that you can retaliate in case anyone is using nukes against you.
With a “handful” of nukes you can’t even outfit a single ICBM with warheads.
So no, having a handful of nukes is utterly pointless, because you can’t use them and you can’t deter anyone from using nukes against you. Even having 500 seems to be very much on the low side if you want to deter a country with sophisticated anti-missile system like the US.
That seems kind of low, or is it just me?
Quick google search says Russia is around 5,977 nukes and the US has 5,428.
I don’t believe this is classified but the United States keeps about 1700 nuclear weapons active located in ground and submarine ICBM’s or in cruise missiles at bomber bases. The rest are in storage. The United States regularly tests the delivery systems as does China. Russia hasn’t had a successful launch in several years.
I don’t believe this is classified but
“Not sure, might be spilling nuclear secrets here, but fuck it, I really wanna reply to this Lemmy comment.”
When did Lemmy evolve into a War Thunder forum?
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President Biden is a War Thunder player confirmed
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China has always kept their nuclear force rather limited in number. Only recently have they started expanding their stockpile.
It still enough to cause a nuclear fallout if both side launch at each other, and they’re targeting 1.5k, the same amount that US has which is ready to deploy.
I thought we’re cutting down on nuclear weapon but ehh, this global warming could makes one wish for a nuclear winter.
Oh, definitely, I was just surprised because I figured China would be closer to both Russia and the US.
Quick google search
Those number were also in the article…
I believe those are total numbers, so that includes both operational warheads (ready to launch) and stored warheads. The article here is specifically referring to the number of operational warheads China has, which is still much lower than that of Russia and the US, but the gap isn’t quite as wide as 500-6,000
