Great China
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In the effort to increase her nuclear deterrence efficiency, China built rail-based missile system. This kind of system had been in service in Russia, the rail based SS-24 Scalpel (truly a very powerful ICBM, with range up to 10.000 km and 10 MIRVs! But now it's no longer in service).
This recent US article confirms China's rail systems:
China developing rail basing systems for missile transport | Washington Free Beacon
Recently chinese CCTV also reported news about Second Artillery trains, but obviously without showing anything significant, eg missile canister or launch system.
Note the FLAT wagon between what could be "normal" passenger wagons. That flat wagon is used for missile canister reloading. In fact this old pic below shows what could be a missile canister being loaded inside a train wagon:
and this other one shows a very similar in size and shape canister:
A close analysis of the canisters tell us clearly that these are not DF-21 missiles. The sizes are different (DF-21 is larger). So we don't know what kind of missiles are fired from the trains, maybe MRBM or IRBM for regional targets.
However, it's very likely that China has now upgraded these trains with DF-31 or DF-31A.
We all know that China has now the world fastest railways (some lines have an average speed of over 300 km/h!), so these strategic trains may travel much faster than road-mobile systems (which speed is less than 80 km/h). Second Artillery's efficiency and strength will dramatically increase!
This recent US article confirms China's rail systems:
China developing rail basing systems for missile transport | Washington Free Beacon
Recently chinese CCTV also reported news about Second Artillery trains, but obviously without showing anything significant, eg missile canister or launch system.
Note the FLAT wagon between what could be "normal" passenger wagons. That flat wagon is used for missile canister reloading. In fact this old pic below shows what could be a missile canister being loaded inside a train wagon:
and this other one shows a very similar in size and shape canister:
A close analysis of the canisters tell us clearly that these are not DF-21 missiles. The sizes are different (DF-21 is larger). So we don't know what kind of missiles are fired from the trains, maybe MRBM or IRBM for regional targets.
However, it's very likely that China has now upgraded these trains with DF-31 or DF-31A.
We all know that China has now the world fastest railways (some lines have an average speed of over 300 km/h!), so these strategic trains may travel much faster than road-mobile systems (which speed is less than 80 km/h). Second Artillery's efficiency and strength will dramatically increase!
