Australia's aquisition of cruise missiles

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

"zalzon" wrote in message
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On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 00:54:41 +1000, The Raven wrote:

Perhaps, although China could probably flatten Australia with missiles
long
before anything came into intercept range.

You mean with a nuke?

I doubt if nukes will be used in a conventional war with China by either
side (US + allies or China). US will just 'hold the line' on Taiwan and
China will throw everything it has in its conventional arsenal at the US.
If that don't work, settle in for a long attrition of firing missiles till
Taipei caves in.

Since Indonesia is not likely to field anything close to a credible
military threat to australia, its puzzling why they would want to
introduce these missiles into the region. It seems more likely that it
would negatively impact their security if other SE Asian countries
introduced air-to-surface standoff missiles of that range.

Which brings me back to my original theory of US wanting to start an arms
race in the region. It would boost exports of armaments (particularly
long range airpower) now that demand from the middle east countries has
dried up.

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.