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U.S. Works Up Plans for Using Nuclear Arms
rjrjr writes: "The L.A. Times reports on the DoD's new stance on the use of nukes, including such comforting notions as nuclear bunker busters. What it all means is well explored in this cogent commentary."
...this article with a bit more detail.
And they aren't thrilled...try looking an non-American press too. the article
The report can be found in its entirety at: http://cryptome.org/dod-npr.htm This site is a good resource for classified documents.
Quite simply the US has had a standing policy that any attack on the US with weapons of mass destruction, be it chemical, biological, nuclear or otherwise, will be responded to with a nuclear strike. So if a rouge nation used chemical weapons on a US city or interest, we would respond, most likely, with nuclear weapons. This is OLD doctrine.
You are actually rather ignorant and an totally naive. I served with the nuclear forces (B-52s) for the 4 years leading up to their final removal from nuclear alert in '91. We were not there playing pretend. We were there to USE the nukes when called to do so.
It wasn't some abstract idea, it was real. Very real. There IS call to use nukes in more than simply a situation following a ballistic nuke attack on the USA or its allies. It WOULD be appropriate and utterly defensible to use nukes against a country that hit us with chemical or biologicals. Any such country foreits it right to exist.
The Soviets/Russians have always had a pragmatic view on the use of nukes. It is about time WE did too. Nukes are just weapons.
How is using a single nuke different than dropping hundreds of HE bombs? Both can lead to the same level of destruction. It matters not if a target was destroyed by a nuke or HE, it is destroyed and there is no distinction. Destroyed in destroyed - unless you go with overkill. Of course it would be different if you used a multikiloton weapon against a small target that could have easily been handled by a load of precision conventionals. If, on the other hand, true deep devestation of a target is called for, then it IS valid to use the right tool for the job, and if that means nuke, so be it. You don't allow an enemy to get away with something simply because you think there should be some mystical, unpassable wall barring the use of a nuke.
If you can produce a nice, "clean", little nuke then fine. It may be the ONLY way to properly destroy a deep bunker with the LEAST amount of risk to our troops AND with reduced collateral effect.
Would you be against use of Fuel-air explosives against massed troops? They are conventional weapons yet they have the same localized thermal and pressure effects as a small nuke. Somehow a nuke with the SAME effects would magically be a no-no? Logically...WHY!? There is no logic nor rationality to your knee-jerk response. No doubt, you didn't actually read any of the articles, just the headlines or excerpts from which you automagically develop a Pavlovian reaction against it without thought. In any case, the DETAILS of the plans are unknown to you. None of these articles are THE actual plans - the DETAILS and actual facts remain unknown to you. But no doubt, even if they were known to you, you wouldn't actually SEE them and would maintain your Pavlovian response to anything with the nuke-word in it.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I was personally surprised not to see a tac-nuke strike on Tora Bora for this reason; a tenet of deterrent policy had been that a large-scale assault on mainland America would result in maximum retribution.
First, the nuclear deterent was aimed at countries with nuclear weapons. Second, the 9/11 attack was not large scale in any usual sense of the term. Third, the Al Qaeda troops at Tora Bora was not the sort of concentration for which tactical nuclear weapons are effective. Fourth, there are several villages in the area that would have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Fifth, Tora Bora is within 10 miles of the Pakistani border, which would certainly have received some of the fallout.
More important, the wider implications of using a nuclear bomb would have enormous and would certainly have alienated the America's allies. I can't believe that most world leaders wouldn't have been very surprised if the the U.S. had used a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan.
The Army and Marines would be expected to run through the immediate results of nuclear strikes in some cases, so its easy to see why they don't like it very much!
...which is another reason to be surprised if a nuclear weapon had been used in Afghanistan.
USA.
Besides, who needs nukes when you have thermobarics? All the terror of mini-nukes, none of the fall-out, and you get a chemical poison-gas weapon as a pleasant, non-Hague Convention side-effect...
The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique--and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs.. If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents.The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique--and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs.. If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents.
Defense Intelligence Agency, "Fuel-Air and Enhanced-Blast Explosive Technology--Foreign," April 1993. Obtained by Human Rights Watch under the US FOIA
The effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense. Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs,and possibly blindness.
Central Intelligence Agency, "Conventional Weapons Producing Chemical-Warfare-Agent-Like Injuries," February 1990. Unclassified document.
Because the "shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue.it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate."
Defense Intelligence Agency, "Future Threat to the Soldier System, Volume I; Dismounted Soldier--Middle East Threat," September 1993, p. 73. Obtained by Human Rights Watch under the US FOIA
Source for these quotes.
Da Blog
Almost correct. The nuclear deterrent was initially intended to deter nuclear attack, but in recent years (read post mid-1980s), successive Administrations have expanded the implied threat; massive chemical or biological attacks (arguably worse than a small nuclear strike) would be included, as would direct attacks on the homeland. Deterrence as a concept benefits from clarity; however, if you can convince people that you are sufficiently serious, lesser deterence threats may also work. The risk of that strategy is that you appear to "cry wolf", and after the first time that you don't use a nuclear weapon in response to an apparent breach, you lose considerable credibility.
Second, the 9/11 attack was not large scale in any usual sense of the term.
Agreed; I wish more people would figure this out. On the other hand, I know for a fact (from discussions with government employees) that the nuclear option was considered in the aftermath of 9/11. I also know that many of my former colleagues desperately wish to move towards a policy that permits nuclear use in difficult conventional circumstances; Tora Bora would have qualified if conventional bombing had proved less effective.
Third, the Al Qaeda troops at Tora Bora was not the sort of concentration for which tactical nuclear weapons are effective.
That may be true, but I very much doubt it. The fact that FAEs and other large conventional munitions were used (repeatedly) argues against you here: the USAF wanted to bring as much explosive yield as they could to the region. It is likely that careful use of nuclear munitions could have made collapsing many of the tunnels much easier - and a sudden, sharp shock as opposed to gradual erosion might have made it considerably harder for the Tora Bora defenders to escape en masse.
Fourth, there are several villages in the area that would have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Fifth, Tora Bora [washingtonpost.com] is within 10 miles of the Pakistani border, which would certainly have received some of the fallout.
I've lumped these two together, because they are basically restatements of the same argument. Your argument assumes that air-burst tactical nuclear weapons are any worse than the fallout from an FAE. They aren't - in fact, you are much more likely to want to live downwind/downriver of a TNW airburst than an FAE airburst. Modern TNW minimize the size of their fireballs, while maximizing blast overpressure. This has the effect of placing immense pressure against the target while leaving almost no fallout. If you are in direct line of sight of the explosion, you may be irradiated by prompt radiation - but this generally doesn't stick around. Except when dealing with neutron bombs (and then only against armoured vehicles), prompt radiation is not the primary killer: blast overpressure is. Residual radiation is always a problem, which is why you try and ensure that the fireball doesn't touch the ground. I strongly recommend that you read The Effects of Nuclear Weapons(*), a publically available text explaining how nukes really work; most of the fallout scare comes from fearmongering by antinuclear lobbies. Even the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - very dirty designs by modern standards - didn't render those areas uninhabitable for long (rail service resumed in Hiroshima a few hours after the nuclear attack, for example).
The point about the Army/Marines having to pass through an area that recently received a nuclear weapon is well received, although the truth is that they would not have much to worry about.
Your other point - that world leaders would be further alienated from the United States in the event of a nuclear use - is somewhat valid. That said, the current Administration seems to derive pleasure from eroding international norms (in fact, many refuse to accept the existence of such concepts - the realism school gone mad, if you will). Yes, some world leaders would have been surprised by US nuclear use - but not as surprised as you might think. Speculation was rife in the international press that the US would go nuclear shortly after 9/11, and I think a lot of world leaders were resigned to the US doing "whatever it takes" in Afghanistan. In fact, a nuclear use might have sent an important message with regard to US policy in regard to the "war on terrorism". I personally wouldn't support using nukes to send a message, but it would not surprise me, either.
(*) - Citation: The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Ed. Samual Glasstone, US Department of Defense, published by the US Atomic Energy Commission, 1962. Additionally, I would recommend looking up the various translated (declassified) former Soviet papers on TNW doctrine. You find them in university libraries. The Soviets were quite advanced in their studies of TNW, mainly because they were less squeamish about them than the West, so its good reading - equivalant NATO documents are harder to find, but they do exist. If you are really interested, check out back-issues of Proceedings (Navy), and the works of the Institute for Strategic Studies. These will lead to many more texts, but I don't really have time to type in the entire bibliography from my Master's thesis. :-)
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