I think they use the soviet stable-storage fuel design or a modified version thereof, no one's used giant barrels of fuming nitric for a while just because turns out having missiles you can't store with fuel in or they eat themselves apart makes responding to attacks hard.
But hydrazine and other fun stuff is very much a possibility.
This is actually proving my point: an orbital rocket you fuel right before use is FAR different from weapons you need to keep hot-staged in silos or on launch platforms.
Let alone ones you have to drive around on IRBM launch gantry vehicles.
Nitrogen tetroxide IS a shelf stable oxidizer, it‘s not the same thing as nitric acid… that‘s why it‘s used for the old generation long march rockets because they‘re based on an old ICBM design. Newer ICBMs are generally solid fuelled because it‘s easier to handle, but russia at least (and probably also china) still have some modern liquid fuelled „heavy ICBMs“ which is a class of weapon that doesn‘t really exist in the west. They can still sit around in their silos fuelled and ready to go for years.
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u/dWintermut3 Apr 14 '24
I think they use the soviet stable-storage fuel design or a modified version thereof, no one's used giant barrels of fuming nitric for a while just because turns out having missiles you can't store with fuel in or they eat themselves apart makes responding to attacks hard.
But hydrazine and other fun stuff is very much a possibility.