Even so I seriously doubt it, there's many reasons why they wouldn't even if the Russians didn't fire back.
Russia's new nuclear weapons
Oliver Hill
Sebastian Mitchell
Alright, the sex worker one is clearly Moldova by any logical/coherent standard. That's just propaganda when it doesn't even have sauce.
Connor Thompson
It's a mixed thing.
First China PLARF (ex-2nd artillery corps) doesn't seem to build hardened shelter for long range ammo (conventional or otherwise) at all in their garrisons, meaning ALL their Cruise Missiles, SRBMs, MRBMs, IRBMs and finally ICBM explody parts are stocked off site, in those mountains tunnels. Properly ID-ing where the ICBMs are is looking for a needle in stack of needles even if you map out all the access points, that's hundreds and hundreds of them (from OSINT data there where 250+ that had been mapped out around 2010).
Second: It's actually extremely hard to hit shit under a mountain, it's already hard to fuck up heavily hardened shelter without resorting to plasma core melting from a direct nuke hit, but with under-mountains-shelters you can realistically come up with solutions that will stop (deflect really) basically any regular nuclear attack even right outside the entry (S-shaped tunnels, multiple concrete blast doors, etc…).
Third: There is virtually no limit to your storage space but the mountain size minus 60m of rock in all directions, meaning you can stockpile, food, fuel, engineering equipments so even in if the US manage to find, then accurately hit, then properly collapse all the entries, the soldiers inside still have a fair chance of digging their way out and nuke the US.
All in all it means that in the case of an all out nuclear attack there is too much that can go wrong for the US and China might have a retaliation option.
Which is plenty enough for deterrence because even if the US unloads all their nukes at China, it's also neigh-impossible to realistically wipe-out China hundred of +1 million inhabitants cities (and God know how many of +100k and smaller towns…)
There will likely be survivors and those survivors will likely have access to nukes.
That's exactly what you need for deterrence.
No more, no less.
It's a minimalistic approach.
Jace Edwards
If we stray away from realpolitik for a bit, and only look at the technological aspect of it, does it mean that even the blast of a full-powered tsar bomb is not enough if it's not a direct hit? Or do you need specially-designed nukes for this task?
So even a mere 100m high mountain could house a nuke-proof shelter?
Samuel Martinez
And now they have a bargaining chip to both disrupt the US politically and have a decent trade policy so they can start making money again.
Blame Obama and Bush for this shit and the Democrats for going to cash this one in so they can jump on Trump's back for supporting Russia if terms are favorable for Putin.
Link related to Bush leaving the ABM armscontrol.org
Russia is economically isolated from the rest of Europe right about now with sanctions put on them from Obama so they're sandbagging right now.
Link Related archive.is
Not quite 1920s and 1930s Germany, but getting there.
Because it's easier to keep land as a buffer against your enemies that way than to cede it to enemies.
Pretty much, it will tank gamma and a nuclear bunker buster won't go through the mountain itself.
They'll be shaken up but they'll still be alive.
That's the Chinese wishfully thinking that the US will even try to invade for a landwar and won't retaliate in an economic war with a hard blockade.
Now, if Russia decides that they'd team up with China to defend them in the event that China decides it will really make Taiwan part of it's own country or the South Koreans changing hands from the US to more Asia specific relations with some political manipulation to gain the largest shipyard in the world for their own gains
Xi making power plays to become Eternal Chairman also works against the US since he has the means and the will to make China s superpower rather than just a regional power like Russia has always tried to be.
The main issue with the US is that they keep everything (Economics, Military Purpose, Politics and Diplomacy) separated with two of those (politics and diplomacy) being schizophrenic and changing every few or so years, sometimes within the same decade.
If they can't get that right, they'll cede control to the Chinese economically (as in they'd take control of markets and resources, not surpass the GDP) and the Russians diplomatically and politically.
Camden Reed
Of course THAT is enough, because it's gonna vaporize most of the mountain, the fire ball of a Tsar bomba at HALF power is 8km wide!
You need something accurate above the Megaton (which isn't that common, +megaton warheads are city erasers, no-one cares for their precision) or something that has been designed specifically to drill deep enough (like American B-61 series).
The problem with that is always a question of where to hit and what's the layout under the mountain, unless you have an exact idea of what they're doing and how you can't really design your bombs for it (back to the needle in the stack of needles).
It's essentially battleship design, except there is virtually no limit to how much armor you can put on it because concrete is cheap and China has all the manpower they ever need to dig…
And they don't need to do it everywhere… they just need to do it once, leak it and no-one will ever be 100% sure they haven't done it elsewhere (that's how deterrence works).
Liam Price
No, my good friend, it is the public's fault we're in this mess. I the late 50's and earily 60's anti-nuke and anti-war groups levied political and public opinion using lies, misinformation, and fear-mongering to create massive public outrage against Nike sites near urban areas and the development of the Safeguard and Sentinel Programs, especially by playing up the MAD theory. Then those same groups went to work in lobbying Congress against any sort of CONUS based ABM and cucking our ICBM fleets. By 68' most our CONUS-based systems like Nike-Ajax, Nike-X BOMARC, Nike-Hercules, Nike-Zeus, Spartan were all shitcanned. It's the same reasons Reagan's SDI was cucked so heavily eventually shitcanned by Clinton, leading to the current nurtured Missile Defense Agency.
Kevin Allen
This was most boring and nonchalant announcement of nuclear ramjet imaginable.
I only understood Putin was talking about nuclear ramjet here after one KSP player mentioned it in his livestream.
It is now more than a week later, and I am still ass-blasted, not only because of fucking commie-speak with it's shitty meaningless acronyms but because our glorious leader doesn't fucking understand what the fuck he is talking about even when it comes to the only area I expected him to have expertise in.
Nuclear ramjets are fucking Philosopher's Stone of rocket science one of many, but nonetheless.
Engineers all over the world wanted to make one for half a century now.
Another superpower wasn't able to make it further than prototype stage at the peak of it's power.
You can't just go "huh, it's a rocket. And, huh, it flies very long, and can, huh, steer too."
And you can't just show me a blurry picture and a 3D cartoon, I want that shit paraded around, with glorious 4k live streaming of it flying around the globe straight from the hull, SpaceX style.
Jace Long
US satellites are so done. We are Star Wars now.
Aaron Myers
Why does the US refuse to upgrade it's nuclear weapons?