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Comment by llamaimperative | Hacker News Reader

It's not clear there's any such thing as "tactical nukes" given that they're strategically useless, and it's actually not even clear there's such a thing as nuclear exchange that isn't full scale war. At least as told by Ellsberg in the Doomsday Machine, there was literally no mechanism for the US to launch a partial nuclear attack.

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All these other comments should just go read the book, it's worth it and a good, if horrifying read. What 'no mechanism' above means is that for many decades the SIOP consisted of 'launch everything'. The only way it was a 'plan' was to time the arrival times to avoid fratricide. This btw meant that even if there was a 'tactical' shooting event in Western Europe, all the targets in China would have been hit, even if they weren't involved. Needless to say, Japan was never informed of this....

From a MAD game theoretic perspective that makes a lot of sense. To avoid non-essential use of nukes, only give policymakers the option of launching everything. Then they will only launch in extreme circumstances. Hopefully only circumstances where there are already missiles inbound.

This avoids the possibility of gradual nuclear escalation, which can be more easily miscalibrated.

This seems somewhat impractical, assuredly - plans would have been made in a dark drawer for the case that an earstwhile allied country became politically unstable.

On both sides of the wall - it would have been feasible for a country to attempt to establish it's own alignment separate from the superpowers through the use of nuclear weapons

There are a limited set of scenarios where a major nuclear state might use a tactical weapon against a lower-tier state. For example, if the USA got into a conflict with Iran and we had actionable intelligence that they were assembling a nuclear weapon in an underground bunker then we might take it out with a small number of tactical nuclear ground strikes. I'm not recommending this but you can game out scenarios where this seems like the least bad course of action.

B-2 bomber crews regularly train for this exact mission.

but why use a nuke? we have all sorts of non-nuclear weaponry. we have bunker busters that can penetrate hundreds of feet.

even if iran can't retaliate with nukes, the geopolitical cost would be insane.

Iran has some ultra tough concrete. I question if even our best bunker busters can penetrate them.

>"Iran’s underground nuclear facility could be between 80 meters (260 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet) below the surface... That could be a problem for the GBU-57 since the US Air Force stated that the bomb could rip through 60 meters (200 feet) of cement and ground before detonating. US officials have talked about detonating two of these bombs consecutively to guarantee the destruction of a location. However, the new depth of the Natanz tunnels still poses a significant obstacle." [1]

[1] https://www.eurasiantimes.com/us-flaunts-massive-ordnance-pe...

The US military has a long history of making technically true statements about it's weapons, but which are still misleading.

If a bomb can actually rip through 200 meters of cement and ground, then the 60 meter statement is also true.

It also has a history of revealing the actual limits of weapons systems, but only after better capabilities exist (with the limits of those still classified or understated) - that is the 60M limit was the max of the old bomb and they don't need to know about the new one.

This feels overly dismissive of the difficulty, but here is a more detailed article if you are interested.

https://www.twz.com/iranian-underground-nuclear-facility-may...

I can see how it comes off as dismissive my bad - it was intended to be a "take such analyses with a grain of salt if you aren't privvy to classified, relevant information".

Things would have to get very very dire to go the tactical nuke route for the US. Not only is there a fear of tactical nuclear war escalating to strategic war there's the fear of demonstrating tactical nuclear war is feasible. If it works and Iran's nuclear capability is destroyed and nothing else happens then it will be all to easy for another power to use tactical nukes and then nuclear weapons become a common component on the battlefield. That makes escalation to the big strategic weapons easier.

The main difference between tactical and strategic comes down to intended use. Tactical nukes are intended for battlefield use, strategic nukes are intended to end other civilizations. They also come in different delivery methods. For instance there are tactical nuclear landmines, artillery, and so on, whereas most strategic weapons are just going to be missiles and ICBMs in particular.

But I do agree that the labeling is largely pointless because there are nominally "tactical" weapons with payloads exceeding 100kt. For contrast, Hiroshima (which was enough to destroy a mid-sized city and kill hundreds of thousands with a single bomb) was 16kt. So "tactical weapons" can easily destroy cities. Even if strategic weapons can be hundreds of times higher yield, at some point you're just beating a dead horse, or city as it may be.

> there are tactical nuclear landmines, artillery, and so on,

Not sure about the landmines, but the US and USSR retired their nuclear artillery decades ago. I'm not sure how much effort it would be to put existing warheads inside shells, or about other countries.

I take the disarmament claims with some degree of skepticism. Alot of these weapons provide substantial flexibility and destructive capability, which superpowers are generally not fond of relinquishing. A lot of the nuclear disarmament stuff hit its peak in the years following the collapse of the USSR, at which point US and Russian relations looked very positive and optimistic moving forward. We're now back to lows not seen since the Cold War.

In any case, for the specifics - Wiki gives 2004 [1] as the date the US reportedly dismantled its nuclear artillery, and in 2000 Russia reported that "nearly all" of its nuclear artillery had been dismantled. Nuclear landmines [2] fall under 'atomic demolition munitions' which are basically any sort of small/mobile nuke, so you get everything from landmines to the suitcase nuke weirdness.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_demolition_munition

The question is "does the other side start launching their second strike against your cities once the first 'tactical' mushroom cloud is seen"?

Wargames have answered that quite clearly. Proud Prophet [1] is what you're looking for. All sorts of different approaches to nuclear engagement were trialed and they all ended up in the end of the world, or at least the end of North America, Europe, and most of the northern hemisphere, alongside just about everybody living there. The scenario you're describing would fall under the 'de-escalatory nuclear strike' category - same outcome. The outcome of these wargames is what drove the shift more towards seeking more of a de-escalatory approach with the USSR.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet

I take tactical to mean something like "< 100 kilotons", meaning the damage would be much more limited than a large device. Those devices certainly exist. Where it's somewhat plausible a nation could use one and face some retaliation that doesn't escalate into a global doomsday.

Depends a lot on who/where/why, how much primary and collateral damage, and so on. You may be right that any use of any nuclear weapon turns into a global doomsday. It's hard to say unless it really happens. I'm often surprised that terrible war related incidents end up not escalating beyond the general region where they happened.

My gripe is not about the nomenclature but about the usefulness of such weapons.

That doesn’t make any sense. Just drop it by a conventional non ICBM method

> no mechanism for the US to launch a partial nuclear attack

Yep, the trajectory to North Korea (from US mainland) has to pass over Russia and the Russians have to trust that it's not coming for them.

Not that Russia would be okay with us striking NK in the first place, but you get the point.

Are you saying that just because the great circle from US to NK goes over Russia? Can we not fire on a less optimal trajectory? Or from a submarine?

You can fire an SLBM from the Pacific or the Sea of Japan without traversing Russia or China.

Assuming you're striking first, yes. Nuclear subs take ~15 minutes to deploy, though, and that isn't the first option when counter striking. The U.S. president has six minutes to decide/launch a counter attack from the missile silos.

Annie Jacobsen has a book "Nuclear War: A Scenario" on all this where she interviews high ranking officials and pries into government documents related to nuclear war.

On the other hand, NK is not launching a first strike that can take out all US land-bases ICBM sites anytime soon.

Isn't Jacobsen a bit of a crank? Some of her other books include ESP And Area 51.

I'm pretty sure she isn't. I take it as more of a research effort into highly classified areas of the government. She doesn't really push a narrative IMO.

NK's geographic position is interesting. Unless US boat is launching east from PRC's Yellow / Bohai sea / PLAN bastion, there isn't a trajectory to NK that doesn't look like it's heading towards PRC mainland. And even then, unless timed during summer months, prevailing winds is going to push fallout / radiation towards BJ. During winter downwind will drift to SKR / JP / east coast PRC. I don't know what proportional counter retaliation is, maybe a few nukes off CONUS west coast urban centres, but PRC isn't going to sit there and eat incidental radiation over major population centres even if target is NK.

Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to Russia that the US is attacking NK and not just nuking Kamchatka?

Can the trajectory of an ICBM be inferred by the height of it’s arc?

> Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to Russia that the US is attacking NK and not just nuking Kamchatka?

I guess that depends on current relations between the two countries and assumes there wouldn't be a breakdown of communications when launches are detected.

> Can the trajectory of an ICBM be inferred by the height of it’s arc?

From the book I mentioned in another comment, Russia has very flawed satellite systems for tracking nuclear launches. There is a lot of focus on the fact that you don't have much time in the event of an imminent nuclear strike so I don't think there is much calculations being done if the missile is (generally) coming towards your homeland.

Thanks, that’s helpful, I’ll checkout that book

Against North Korea why would the US even use an ICBM? Why not a B-2 flown from Guam or from the continental US?

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