Pat Flannery wrote:


Does anyone know if Shenzhou used a Soyuz-style lifting reentry
profile? And what the average CEP of a Soyuz landing has proved to be?

Pat

Out of curiosity, I looked up what is known regarding the CEP of
operational Chinese ICBMs; data varies, but tends to indicate an
estimated CEP of between 500-3,500 meters for the operational Dong Feng
5 ICBM with a single 2 Mt warhead (they may be MIRVing these) at 500
meters you may be able to destroy a Minuteman silo with a warhead that
big; but not at anywhere near 3,500 meters.
The new Dong Feng 31 ICBM is estimated to have a CEP of between 300-500
meters, and warhead yields seem none too sure in it's single or triple
warheaded versions.
This data is from he
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/china/icbm.htm
What is surprising is the tiny size of China's ICBM force compared to
either the U.S. or Russia's- China has only 24 Dong Feng 5's deployed-
we topped out a 1000 Minutemans and 54 Titan II's IIRC (and 550 of those
Minutemen had triple warheads on them.) for a grand total of 2,154
warheads; the Soviets had 1,398 ICBM's as of 1983 with 5,678 warheads
total.

Pat