On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 01:25:41 +0800, Alfred Loo wrote:

IIRC China has enough conventional missiles to flatten Australia. Nukes not
needed. But then why should they?


They would need IRBMs of 4000+kms range to hit australia's major cities
and many of them. Nobody uses conventional warheads with missiles of that
range since its not cost effective, not accurate enough to cause any
pinpoint damage and not destructive enough to flatten anything.

A conventional explosive on an IRBM would have the destructive power of
about one or two bomb ladened fighter planes (with the bombs dropped
innacurately).

Short range ballistic missiles however are a different story.