Nuclear weapons’ use was a taboo that had not been broken since the Nagasaki bombing in the closing days of World War II. Most of the calculations for how the US and Russia would respond to the use of nuclear weapons have their origins in the Cold War and the delicate “Balance of Terror” that kept the world safe but in fear. If Putin cannot come out of this war with something that looks like victory or there is an occasion where Russian soldiers are being seen to be generally routed, the chances of nuclear use by Russia to shore up its status as a world power start to grow. Inefficient, inept and clumsily brutal, Russia’s military has one more chance to reverse its misfortunes on the battlefield as a new wave of reinforcements, culled from overseas, begin to make themselves felt. Russia has done badly in this war, the myth of its new professional armed forces lying in tatters, the country’s international prestige at rock bottom. With the stakes being so high, why would anyone take that risk? Other Warsaw Pact and NATO members had their own plans for nuclear use.Īny such exchange would have rendered much of central Europe immediately uninhabitable, the concern being that tactical nuclear use would very quickly escalate to strategic nuclear use with most of the United States, the Soviet Union, France and the United Kingdom all being destroyed within the space of an afternoon. The Czechoslovak army alone had plans to use 131 nuclear weapons against NATO targets as part of its initial attack. During the Cold War, they were integrated into every level of military planning by both NATO and its communist equivalent, the Warsaw Pact. Tactical weapons were meant to be used against troop concentrations, ships, marshalling yards, airfields, etc. A single kiloton is equivalent in power to a thousand tons of TNT, a high explosive. For a sense of scale, the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima was roughly 15kt. Modern warheads have a variable “dial-up” yield, meaning an operator can specify its explosive power, and a tactical weapon would be anywhere from a fraction of a kiloton to 50kt in strength. In the mid-1950s, as more powerful thermonuclear bombs were being built and tested, military planners thought that smaller weapons with a shorter range would be more useful in “tactical” or military situations. Tactical nuclear warheads were created to give military commanders more flexibility on the battlefield. What are these weapons and what would be the significance of their use? What are they? Tactical nuclear weapons have not been part of strategic thinking since the end of the Cold War in 1991. As Russia flounders on the battlefields of Ukraine, the once-unthinkable possibility of nuclear weapons use is now on the rise, as President Vladimir Putin’s options for victory narrow.
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