I disagree, with respect.
The Chinese in the late 1960s are not the Chinese of today. They couldn't field a fleet of subs. The tech they bought from the Russians was crap. Many of the nukes would not have gotten off the launch pad, and probably not detonated had they made it across the Pacific.
They were in no mood to fight the US.
Today - much different story.
Really? What class of SSN, SSBN, and SLBM, do the Chinese currently have operational? Which ones do they have operational that can compare with USN Seawolf and Virginia class SSNs, Ohio class SSBNs, and the Trident-ll D5 SLBM?
Ill give you a hint. The answer is less then one. They dont have an operational SLBM system and they are two to three generations behind us in SSN development. While there are some reports they have successfully mirved a few of their DF-5 ICBMs its believed most, if not all, are single warhead capable. This is a volatile liquid fuel ICBM of a type that has to be actually fueled before it could be launched. So they have 24 nuclear weapons they can hit us with as long as we were nice enough to give them time to fuel them first and providing the 1960s design actually works.
A single USN Ohio class SLBM, of which we have 14, has the capability of launching 24 D5 SLBMs each of which has the capacity to deliver 10 independently targeted warheads that blow at 475 kt, "Hiroshima was 16 kt". They have a range of 7,000 miles and a CEP of 120 meters. In other words anyone of our 14 SSBNs is capable of delivering up to 240 warheads each one approx 30 times more powerful then the Hiroshima bomb and we can put each one in a baseball infield from 7,000 miles away. These SSBNs are so quiet and invincible even our own SSNs cant find them. They are black holes in the ocean.
The USA also has over 500 solid fueled Minuteman-lll ICBMs each one limited by SALT agreements to deliver one nuclear warhead in the 335 kt range with a CEP of about 350'. It has about the range of the SLBMs but its not quite as accurate. We cant put it in an infield and can only put it in a ballpark.
But it gets better. We have about 1,300 B-61 gravity nukes our Jabos can deliver and that blow at 350 kt. We have about another 550 of the same type thats designed for our bombers to drop. We have another 320 ,150 kt, warheads on the business end of Tomahawk cruise missiles. And lastly we have another 1,800 nukes of the same power that are delivered in air launched cruise missiles. Altogether America has about 10,000 nuclear weapons of which over 5,000 would be OTW to China with just one phone call.
Do the math. The Chinese would much prefer to shoot their own 24 nukes at themselves, "and who knows how many actually work", then they would shoot them at America. At least that way theres a chance some small part of their society would survive.
