So you want to fight a nuclear war

Sigh.

With North Korea:

If North Korea provocates with an non-nuclear attack on Guam, likely the US would retaliate with SLBM conventional cruise missiles on Pyongyang which would be highly criticized by Russia and China.

If the US initiates or overresponds (nukes from conventional) then I could see a measured nuclear retaliation from China / Russia. Meanwhile, South Korea would be destroyed by North Korea likely in a nuclear holocaust followed by a conventional hell. The US would have to respond in kind and keep some kind of diplomacy. It would be far more risky than anything in the cold war.

Question time.

It's well known no nuclear weapons have been used in war since WWII. Is this because:

A) Nuclear weapons are to horrible as weapons and it would take really bad depraved indifference to human life to use them? or

B) Nuclear weapons are of only limited usefulness militarily, and therefore not worth the hassle and effort involved.

I favor B), even though in the 50s and 60s nukes seemed like the answer to every military problem. Soviet tanks pouring over the Fulda Gap? Get sub-kiloton man-portable nukes. SAMs only get close to their targets? Get 1 kiloton warheads on 'em. You can't locate SLBM subs more precisely than a small area and they may be 300 ft under water anyway? Get a 1 megaton nuke pronto. Navy fighters can't get past the defenses of surface ships to sink them? Get multi-kiloton nukes on short range cruise missiles, fly them low.

Any other choices? There was fear of retaliation in kind, otherwise I'm sure the US would have used nukes in Korea or Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan, or against the Chinese. Massive blow back from nearly every other nation in the world is included in option B (the hassle and effort involved)

I pray that it is A.

Quote: FrGamble

I pray that it is A.

Granting your assumptions, I don't think a prayer can change what is.

That said, no doubt many, many, many people who have the authority to use nuclear weapons, have decided they are too terrible to use.

It's just hard to make sure.

We have every president and prime minister of the USA, France and GB, plus general secretary of the communist party of the USSR, and whatever the Chinese called Mao and his successors (and whoever else has authority there). On a less certain time frame there's the prime ministers of India, Pakistan and Israel. and finally the dictator in North Korea.

Where and when was there reason to use them?

List their conflicts and you get no plausible motive to use nukes given each country's known and likely military and strategic doctrines.

For the USA to use a nuclear weapon, even a small backpack or a nuclear torpedo, basically requires permission from the POTUS.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB , commonly known as the Mother of All Bombs) is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was touted as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal.

Using a MOAB does not require very high level clearance. MOAB has a 15 to 20 kiloton explosive yield.


The US nuclear torpedo carried an 11 kiloton warhead was wire-guided and 600 torpedoes were built between 1963 and 1976. The bomb that hit Hiroshima was only 16 kilotons, but a nuclear torpedo would detonate underwater and wouldn't have nearly the same effect.

People said that had a 200% effectiveness since it would probably destroy both the enemy target and the submarine that fired it, but I assume that was just a joke.

In many war gaming scenarios where permission is assumed, a nuclear device is more often used.

Quote: Pacomartin

Using a MOAB does not require very high level clearance. MOAB has a 15 to 20 kiloton explosive yield.

A kiloton means one thousand tons. This would give the MOAB a yield of 20,000 tons of TNT. I just don't see it.

Wikipedia gives a yield equivalent to 11 tons of TNT. That sounds right given the size of the weapon. But that's about 0.01 kilotons.

Hell, if you could do multi-kiloton weapons with conventional explosives, we'd have seen whole cities flattened and millions upon millions of people killed like for every war there's ever been since the 1940s, including WWII.

Now, the Davy Crockett sub-kiloton weapon, which was actually deployed, weighs about 25 kilos.

That's the difference between nuclear and chemical explosives.

Quote:

The US nuclear torpedo carried an 11 kiloton warhead was wire-guided and 600 torpedoes were built between 1963 and 1976. The bomb that hit Hiroshima was only 16 kilotons, but a nuclear torpedo would detonate underwater and wouldn't have nearly the same effect.

Not the blast. But you'd poison the coast for decades.

Quote: Nareed

I just don't see it.

You are correct, of course. Mea Culpa.

Quote: Nareed

Not the blast. But you'd poison the coast for decades.

There was some debate about how long lasting the effects would be, but the weapon stopped being produced in 1975 and is no longer deployed anywhere.

Quote: Pacomartin

MOAB has a 15 to 20 kiloton explosive yield.

I know you know enough about it to recognize you misspoke here.

We are talking tons of TNT, not kilotons. The Wiipedia page has the MOAB as 11 tons of TNT equiv., about its actual weight.

The Russian FOAB claims to yield 44 tons equiv., which is disputed.

see side panels on the pages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs

Quote: Pacomartin

There was some debate about how long lasting the effects would be,

Long.

There's much misunderstanding of radiation. The radiation produced by a bomb spreads outward from it at near the speed of light. The real problem is fallout, bits of the bomb assembly (made highly radioactive by the detonation) attached to particles in the environment.

A high-altitude detonation produces minimal fallout. A ground level one produces a lot of fallout, An underground detonation also produces a even more fallout, but it's contained underground.

An underwater detonation would produce as much fallout as one underground, but it won't be contained. Some will be carried to the atmosphere by the water sprayed upwards (depending on depth), but most will stay in the area for a while. If near a coastline, it will wash on the coast and contaminate it.

Not a good idea at all.

I still think warfare is 'get there firstus with the mostus'.