We haven’t heard much about nuclear weapons lately, not since the Cold War ended. It appears that nuclear combat mano-a-mano with the Russkis is extremely unlikely today, and any conceivable nuclear exchanges in the near future are likely to be attacks from or on rogue states, particularly paranoid third world nations who should be spending their money more wisely. Nuclear issues have changed to reflect 21st cenury realities, which doesn’t make them any less likely, just different.

Twenty or thirty years ago, the situation was very different. Everyone had some familiarity with the issues, and some of us used to deal with them on a professional level. I wasn’t exactly a Cold Warrior, but I was a spook; I had security clearances and had a very minor role in a few programs. Not much of what I worked on then is very relevant today, but the issues were always at the forefront, even in the nightly news and I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about them. Fear not, there is nothing in this essay that could get me or the reader investigated. As for modern day nuclear war fighting, I suspect every thing has changed except the laws of physics. I read the newspapers just like you do, and I doubt I have any more access to current information than you. I also doubt thee is anything in these notes you couldn’t easily locate for yourself on the Web. But I do think I have a historical perspective some of you may profit by.

Tactical Nukes

There are two major categories of nuclear weapons: Tactical and Strategic. We’ll talk about the tactical ones first. A tactical nuclear weapon is one likely to be used by a commander on the battlefield, fighting a battle. He may have standing authority to use them should certain circumstances develop, or he may need to get specific permission from up the chain of command, but essentially, a lower level commander, a pilot, a ship’s captain, or an officer in a forward bunker gives the order to shoot. My Navy ship in the late 1960s was nuclear capable, and carried rocket launched nuclear depth charges and Terrier anti-aircraft missiles that could be nuclear-tipped. Although designed to attack poorly-located subs and aircraft squadrons, it is clear that these weapons could also be effective against surface targets. Nukes are like hand grenades, pinpoint accuracy is not an issue. The ship was also equipped to be made airtight and could pump sea water to wash down its topsides. The crew was drilled in decontamination procedures, so it was clear we were fully capable of employing our nukes to hit targets close aboard, say from visual range to the full extent of our weapons (several tens of miles). There have been rumors that the Royal Navy nuked a whale in the South Atlantic during the Falklands war, either mistaking it for an Argie sub, or just to be sure it wasn’t. We’ll probably never know for sure.

On the battlefield, nukes would be used to take out large, poorly located and protected targets, such as tank battalions, enemy-occupied towns, transportation nodes and supply stores or infantry concentrations dispersed over large areas. This was the weapon of choice against an enemy that had a great local advantage in numbers or firepower, such as the Soviet Army in Europe, or the North Korean forces on the Peninsula. Of course, this meant that the first-use side would be the one on the defensive, which muddled the niceties of who exactly was the “aggressor”. This ambiguity plays a role in arms negotiations, with one side saying the other can overwhelm its forces and has no choice but to go nuclear, and their opponent saying that the purpose is really to threaten perfectly defensive operations and to make the possibility of escalation or even premptive strike more likely and the situation more inherently unstable. They are both right.

It is tempting to think of tactical weapons as less dangerous than strategic ones, they are smaller, have less yield and range, and less destructive capability. They can also be employed piecemeal, they need not lead to a general strategic exchange. But they are also more dispersed, harder to control and coordinate, and in the confusion of battle, the possibilities of error increase. Escalation is always a possibility, and there will always be a temptation to use them or lose them. Also, even a defensive weapon automatically becomes a target, one perhaps best taken out by another tactical nuke, which destabilizes the situation.

This dichotomy between defensive and offensive uses of nuclear weapons is always ambiguous, the distinction isn’t always clear with nukes, and seems to be more a function of politics than of the technical details or battle capabilities of the arms involved. Think of it this way, if you go visit your neighbor’s castle, you carry your sword and spear for protection against beast or brigands. But when he sees you bring your shield and armor, he might just suspect an attack. In the nuclear world, the line between offensive and defensive weapons and strategies is very blurry. This becomes a big issue in strategic arms negotiations. To risk another potentially absurd simile, consider the frontier sheriff and Black Bart squaring off in the town street. If Bart hides slinks towards a watering trough, that cannot be interpreted as a purely defensive action. The lawman is justified in slapping leather before Bart can reach cover.

The greatest advantages and virtues of tactical nuclear weapons are simultaneously their biggest drawbacks and dangers, and the same can be said for strategic arms. On the one hand, they give the commander increased flexibility, more options, the ability to commit himself partially, thereby eliminating the need for a potentially disastrous all-or-nothing response. On the other hand, these same advantages make them more unpredictable, less manageable, harder to coordinate, and more likely to lead us into situations we have never faced before, whose outcomes and resolutions cannot be foreseen. They also have the seduction of being cheap. The cost of developing, maintaining and deploying a few nukes in Korea or the Fulda Gap is a lot less lhan maintaining a quarter-million men to defend those positions. They are the cheap way out, and that is always dangerously tempting.

We’ll talk about strategic weapons in the next essay.