Sidestepping Tactical Nuclear Weapons Limits With Strategic Bombs

Lasrick writes "Benjamin Loehrke describes the rather odd definitions of what is a 'tactical' nuclear weapon and what isn't. 'There is enough ambiguity surrounding the capabilities of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons to render the term "tactical" all but useless for arms control purposes. As the United States and Russia pursue new arms control treaties, they should drop the tactical distinction and limit the total number of all nuclear weapons — strategic, tactical, or other.'"

Comments

Re:How does SDI work?

[Sqr(twg)]

The basic idea is: you use satellites detect the nozzle flame of ICBM:s as they launch, then use other satellites to destroy their fuel tanks or payloads with lasers.

The only difference between Civ2 and real life is that in Civ2 it works.

I have trouble seeing the point

[Sycraft-fu]

Why do we care about limits on this stuff, in terms of numbers? I can totally understand saying "Let's get rid of these things, period, they are too dangerous." However I can also understand why that'll never happen. So then why do we care how many the US or Russia have given that the answer is "more than is needed" in both cases? It isn't like having "only" say 1,000 nuclear weapons in the US instead of 5,000 would really mean anything.

Is all just seems rather silly. If someone has a viable strategy for real global nuclear disarmament, I'm all ears. However this push to try and limit the numbers the US and Russia has seems like feel-good security theater. They'll agree to it because they know it makes no difference to their actual fighting capabilities. They can destroy a couple hundred nukes as a symbolic thing, probably the ones the computer simulations show are failing anyhow, and it changes nothing.

This is just silliness.

Re:I have trouble seeing the point

[realityimpaired]

The number of weapons required to malfunction to cause serious problems: ONE. Even if it's a 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001% probability; the more weapons you have in more places, the more likely something goes wrong.

With you until you said that. Nuclear weapons are not stored in an armed state, and they aren't designed to keep a critical mass in such a configuration that it could turn into an uncontrolled fission. The absolute 100% worst case scenario possible would be that the non-nuclear part of the payload (which is used to mash the nuclear components together and trigger a critical mass detonation) could go off prematurely, but as the weapon is not stored in an armed state, that would not trigger a nuclear detonation (in the un-armed state, the physical position of the nuclear fuel is such that it would be blown away from each other, not towards, in the event that the explosive went off accidentally). It would, essentially, be a dirty bomb whose effective area would be contained to the storage facility in which it went off... dirty bombs are most effective when they're used outside where the local weather can carry the nuclear contaminants. Even that is not very likely, because the type of explosives they're using in modern weapons are extremely difficult to set off accidentally. (check youtube for a video of somebody cooking their lunch with burning c4... that stuff does not accidentally explode).

A *far* more likely scenario than anything you suggest would actually be some nuclear fuel "going missing". The problem with stealing a bomb is that somebody will notice it pretty much immediately. They're big, and difficult to transport. While you could fit one in an 18-wheeler, you'd have a hard time sneaking that truck into a military facility without being noticed. On the other hand, the nuclear fuel is significantly smaller and easier to transport. In theory, somebody could take the nuclear fuel from a weapon while working on it, and sneak it out in a briefcase. I would be extremely surprised if anybody ever managed to successfully do that, because my understanding is that they film people when working on nuclear weapons, and that nobody's ever left alone with a bomb.

You're right, it only takes one, but there are safeguards in place that provide an extremely small chance that any of the situations you suggest could ever happen. I would prefer nuclear disarmament too, but given that it's never going to happen, I'm comfortable with the safeguards in place. The engineers who designed these things are not morons, and designed them to fail safe (or at least, as safe as you can get with several kilograms of nuclear fuel involved).

Bad strategy

[gmuslera]

Since War Games we know that the only winning move is not to play

Re:Is "tactical nuclear weapon" a bad word now?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

During the Cold War, there was a bitter German joke to the effect of, "Tactical nuclear weapon: any nuclear weapon intended to be detonated over German territory." IOW, it's a euphemism, and "tactical" nukes are, in practice, unlikely to be any less murderous than "strategic" ones.

Re:Nuclear weapons are blase

[cavreader]

Orbital strikes are the way to go. Launch a steel based rod metal projectile insulated using the heat shield materials that came out of old shuttle project. Add the maneuvering control system currently used with drones and thrusters for course changes and there you are. Massive destruction without having to worry about any radioactive fall out. People have criticized the US stoppage on the shuttle but they never mention the US already has a craft capable of reaching orbit, maneuvering, and landing back on earth. So far it has being a total military project but it has been in development for over 10 years using information collected from the shuttle program. The maneuverability to intercept and destroy any other countries military satellites if needed would also be devastating to those countries who rely on them.