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What does "tactical" mean in the phrase "tactical nuke"?

To oversimplify greatly, "tactical" means it's supposed to win a battle and "strategic" means its supposed to win (or prevent) a war. That has implications for size, delivery system, and a whole bunch of other factors, but that's the nub of it.

I'm familiar with the distinction in the abstract, but didn't really understand how it applied to nuclear weapons. I guess I had a sort of "all or nothing" mentality where if a nuclear weapon gets used, there is necessarily some strategic aspect to its deployment because its impact would be so devastating. But that is not necessarily the case.

It's a valid concern. Even a "tactical" nuke is likely to have strategic repercussions. I guess what matters is that somebody thinks/hopes the scope will be limited to the tactical, even if that turns out not to be the case. It's like using "Peacekeeper" as the name for an ICBM.

Perhaps you're not aware that there are "small" nuclear weapons? These are only a few kilotons in yield but can be very portable for battlefield use. Think of a nuclear mortar that shoots a few miles out with a half mile blast radius. This is the kind of thing that would keep people up at night if they went missing. It probably keeps someone up just making sure they don't go missing.

For example, the M388 "Davy Crockett".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiM-RzPHyGs (test footage)

While that test was successful, as far as I know, the project was stopped before it was ever a "production" device. I suspect his was because of the risk to the operator, as small mortar and similar nuclear devices could jam or otherwise fail to move away form the launch site.

The whole concept of a nuclear mortar seems like an idea that sounds good on paper, but probably has all kinds of problem and subtle risks in implementation.

They produced 2,100 warheads for it and it was actively deployed from 1961 to 1971 (I believe it was deployed to the Korean peninsula among other places).

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/07/20/king-of-the-wild-f...

Tactical nukes are used in tactical situations (See Tactics vs Strategy), meaning during active combat against individual fighting units (tank battalions)

"Tactical nukes are used in tactical situations"

What a pretty circle.

The old, grim joke was "a tactical nuke is one that explodes in Germany."

But yeah, small and designed to be delivered against enemy troop concentrations, as opposed to the larger strategic weapons that are designed to be used against enemy population centers and strategic weapons.

> While there are several ways to distinguish between strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons, most analysts consider nonstrategic weapons to be shorter-range delivery systems with lower yield warheads that might be used to attack troops or facilities on the battlefield. They have included nuclear mines; artillery; short-, medium-, and long-range ballistic missiles; cruise missiles; and gravity bombs. [1]

[1] https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf

Tactical is usually used in contrast to strategic, and it generally qualifies the scope or level of abstraction being talked about.

Strategy is considered before battle, while tactics are applied after battle has begun.

A strategic nuke may prevent or end a war, but a tactical nuke might only achieve one of the goals of a strategy.

A tactical nuke is designed to be used. A strategic nuke is designed to never be used.

I don't think this is a good definition. The US military to my knowledge hasn't used a tactical nuke in live battle conditions ever, and has used 2 "strategic" class nukes in live battle conditions.

In my opinion, all nukes today are strategic nukes in that they intend to make your enemy think twice before launching their own nukes.

Even tactical sized nukes, if used today, will ignite a severe counter-reaction that is highly likely to escalate to full blown intercontinental nuclear war.

At the time they were first developed, tactical nuclear weapons were intended to be used in a full-scale war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. There was an opinion in the military establishment that chemical and low-yield nuclear weapons would be used to a limited degree on the battlefields of an otherwise conventional war.

I don't think this view is as crazy at it sounds on the surface. I don't think the US and UK would launch a general nuclear strike if, say, Soviet Frontal Aviation put a nuclear-tipped cruise missile into the USS Eisenhower or Seventh Army engineers blew strategic bridges with nuclear demolition charges. It's a dangerous line to flirt, though.

I believe it describes shorter range nukes used on battlefields, for example against opposing ground forces.

The opposite would be strategic nukes. These are long range, high-yield weapons used to knock-out cities and bring about nuclear apocalypse type scenarios.

Strategic nukes take out cities, tactical nukes take out tank formations, fleets, bunkers, etc.

More specifically strategy has an overall large plan and tactics take care of one specific goal.

So a strategic plan to prevent the use of a harbor might be a single strategic sized nuke. You could say the tactic and strategic levels merged into one. There's only one tactical move as part of that strategic plan. One call does it all.

A nuclear tactical plan to prevent the use of a harbor might involve as a small part of the overall mission a nuclear torpedo to put a pesky submarine out of commission so a naval invasion can happen without being sunk by the sub. Or a nuclear artillery shell to clear a tank battalion guarding an approach to the harbor from your forces that'll take control of the harbor.

Typically dropping a bridge with a nuke while retreating is rarely/never strategic, it's tactical as a tiny component of an overall retreat involving numerous tasks.

Another characteristic is strategic "button pushing" rarely is authorized on the front line, but tactical "button pushing" is usually authorized at the front line. So M16s tend not to be strategic.

Although worth noting that the bombs used at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were in the range of later "tactical" weapons.

That's right, the primary distinction is to the types of targets each is intended for, though generally speaking tactical nukes are lower-yield than strategic ones. (Because if you're aiming a nuke at enemy forces on a battlefield, the odds are pretty good that there are friendly forces a short distance away on the same field that you'd rather not kill at the same time.)

So, "small" then :)

Not necessarily. It's more about range and use, but generally the yields are smaller. Some tactical nuclear weapons had yields larger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Tactical nuclear weapons were generally on shorter range (rather than intercontinental) delivery systems and generally were tasked with taking out an objective, which may or may not be mobile, than fixed infrastructure or a population/industry/control center.

"Small" does not signify scope and purpose the way "tactical" does in this context.

In short, and very simply - it means the nuke is smaller and more focused.

From my time in combat zones - we always thought of tactical as the level at which a battalion or lower might operate. Strategic would be entire regiments or larger, potentially involving entire countries.

A nuke that clears the path for a battalion (political implications of using a nuclear weapon aside) is tactical. A nuke that eliminates a capital or engulfs many battalions in flames is strategic.

I would imagine, though, that a "tactical-sized", or smaller, nuke could have strategic implications if you detonated it somewhere of great import (eliminating the leadership while all in one building, for example). This would be a strategic use of a nuke.

But in actuality - it is very complicated. Something like a nuclear weapon is a multifaceted action and cannot be distilled to a single word.

Tactical nuclear weapons are designed for uses like destroying enemy forces on the battlefield -- like short-range missiles, small bombs, artillery shells, and emplaced area-denial weapons (sometimes called "nuclear land mines").

As opposed to strategic nuclear weapons, which are designed for uses like destroying enemy industrial capacity, key resource infrastructure, military command and control facilities, and population centers.

Well the US military (from whom the term comes) doesn't seem to understand the difference between tactics and strategy (it defines the difference in terms of the number of people involved). I understand tactics to be about execution, strategy about setting and changing goals, but if you search for discussions on the subject you'll find a wide and confusing range of opinions.

Given that the first use of a "tactical" nuclear weapon would change the nature of any war, they're a rather strange idea (and in practice, tactical nuclear weapons were phased out because of this). Strategic nuclear weapons changed the rules of warfare, redefining the goals that could realistically be chosen -- one of the few unambiguously correct uses of the word "strategy" IMO.

Well the US military (from whom the term comes) doesn't seem to understand the difference between tactics and strategy...

This is 90% of global history since WWII, in a nutshell.

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