By Christopher Witman
Probably a lot different than what most people would expect. Conventional wisdom conjures up images of two nuclear powers who, after a period of conventional and tactical nuclear warfare,
Probably a lot different than what most people would expect. Conventional wisdom conjures up images of two nuclear powers who, after a period of conventional and tactical nuclear warfare, suddenly unleash their strategic arsenals in some firey death spasm at their opponent leaving both sides to have more or less “shot their wad”. During Cold War, when the US/USSR possessed 60,000+ weapons combined, nuclear war-fighting planners had the ability to saturate an enemy’s military, political and economic infrastructure and still have weapons left over. (Not that they’d be needed for a long time, if ever, but planning for the future is taken into consideration.)
However, with the end of the Cold War and the vast drawdown in the size of nuclear arsenals as a whole, there are now more warheads now in storage or pending destruction than there are in the strategic stockpiles of the US and Russia. The US has about 1400 while Russia has about 1600. Everything else outside of those numbers are either in storage or shorter-range tactical weapons like the US B61 nuclear bomb or the Russian 9K720 Iskander – Wikipedia
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So, militaries have to do more with less and as a result of this, warhead yields have dropped while their accuracy has greatly increased. For example, the bulk of the US Trident fleet will soon be far more accurate while launching from a sub than a land-based ICBM would be, which in turn now makes our Minuteman III missiles less important in the grand scheme of things and was one of the reasons why they only carry single warheads as opposed to MIRV’d vehicles.
So, the land-based ICBM force could be taken out and there would still be plenty of a 2nd strike force left to retaliate.
Having that ability also limits an aggressor on what targets they are going to hit. The popular “theory” always seems to be that when war comes, all the major cities of NATO and Russia are going to be prime targets, despite the fact that many analysts dispute such talk. As do I. Attacking cities only allows for one thing, it invites retaliation on your own populace which no sane leader will accept willingly. So, unless a city has a vital political or military target located near it, common sense says they wouldn’t be hit. But there are other reasons of which I will get to in a moment.
So, how could a potential conflict start? Well, history teaches us that in just about every example, with the exception of Cuba in ’62 and Middle East in ‘73, nuclear war almost came by accident. Whether it was a training tape left in a computer, faulty switches or poor command and control services. It was accidents and miscalculations that brought the world to the brink.
But setting accidents and human error aside for the sake of this question, an exchange could very well begin “the old fashioned way” that is, as part of an escalation of an already existing conflict.
A conflict that likely begins conventionally for a period of time until one side determines that they have a need to use tactical nuclear weapons. Side B attacks Side A’s army units who are advancing on their territory. Side A then retaliates and you see the gradual use of weapons on or near the battlefield.
Its here where things become somewhat disjointed from past theories on nuclear warfare. Using tactical weapons will help to “level the playing field” somewhat for their conventional forces. So it’s here, where one side may decide to cross the strategic nuclear threshold by “sending a message” to their opponent. It’s here where you could see the start of a series of small scale exchanges where 10 weapons are fired here, 20 are fired there, over a period of days or even weeks as politicians work behind closed doors to arrange a cease fire.. No mass launch but instead a “tit for tat” exchange to see who will get more favorable terms at the negotiating table.
As I mentioned earlier, these targets would almost exclusively be limited to military targets. You don’t need to target cities because in many cities, especially those in the US and the West, there will already be chaos. The cities themselves will grind to a halt as people attempt to flee, emergency services and local government personnel will stop arriving for work to stay with their families, all in the belief that their city will be hit next and when cities start shutting down, national economies start becoming affected. All without having to attack that city directly.
So, keeping an exchange small but persistent has benefits all of its own. The US has long studied what’s called Nuclear utilization target selection or better known as “NUTS” when it comes to waging a nuclear war as opposed to the much-fabled Mutual assured destruction
or MAD Doctrine.
A gradual exchange also has the benefit of allowing one side to keep a healthy reserve of weapons on hand for future use.
So its very much possible that you could see more of a prolonged nuclear exchange that’s on a smaller scale as opposed to the popular “use ’em or lose ’em“ scenarios.