| Country: |
People's Republic of China |
| Alternate Name: |
DF-2 |
| Class: |
MRBM |
| Basing: |
Surface based |
| Length: |
20.60 m |
| Diameter: |
1.65 m |
| Launch Weight: |
32000 kg |
| Payload: |
Single warhead, 1500 kg |
| Warhead: |
Nuclear 15 kT or 20 kT |
| Propulsion: |
Single-stage liquid |
| Range: |
1250 km |
| Status: |
Obsolete |
| In Service: |
1966-early 1980s |
Details
The CSS-1 was a medium-range, surface-based, liquid propellant ballistic missile deployed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This withdrawn and obsolete system is known in the People’s Republic of China as the Dong Feng (East Wind) DF-2 class of medium-range ballistic missiles. The DF-2 is essentially a domestically produced version of the Soviet SS-3 missile, deployed from 1966 onwards.
The CSS-1 could be used as a strategic weapon against both the US and the Soviet Union if placed along the PRC border. From bases within the PRC, key US bases within Japan and a number of Russian cities were within range of the PRC’s nuclear weapons. If equipped with nuclear warheads, the CSS-1 had sufficient accuracy to destroy large military bases or population centers. Its primary use was to prevent the United States from interfering with PRC supremacy in the region. During the Korean War, the PRC attempted to forcibly expel the US from the region using soldiers; nuclear weapons would provide a far stronger threat. The CSS-1 gave the PRC a nuclear strike capability that it did not have during the PRC intervention in the Korean War. The CSS-1 could be transported, but used non-storable liquid fuel and could only be fired from large, fixed launch bases, making it slow to launch and vulnerable to attack.
The CSS-1 had a range of 1,250 km (777 miles) with a payload of 1,500 kg. It used an inertial guidance system that provides it with an unknown level of accuracy, however it is likely similar to the 2000 m CEP of the Russian SS-2. The CSS-1 could carry either a 15 kT or a 20 kT warhead, making it comparable to US nuclear weapons used against Japan at the end of the Second World War. It had a length of 20.6 m, a width of 1.65 m, and a launch weight of 32,000 kg. The missile was a single-stage liquid propellant missile and needed several hours to prepare for flight.
In the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union supplied the PRC with a number of SS-2 ‘Sibling’ missiles. Several domestically produced versions were given the designation DF-1. The DF-2 was built following the break between the PRC and the Soviet Union, during the early 1960s. It is believed that the first test launch occurred in June 1964, with deployment starting in 1966. The CSS-1 missiles were all withdrawn in the early 1980s in favor of more reliable and more readily deployable missile platforms.(1)
Footnotes
- Duncan Lennox, Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems 46 (Surrey: Jane’s Information Group, January 2007), 549.
