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> Imagine that say a Chechnyan separatist group detonated a nuclear warhead on U.S. soil. What sort of response would having low-yield nukes enable? Drop a 1-

> Imagine that say a Chechnyan separatist group detonated a nuclear warhead on U.S. soil. What sort of response would having low-yield nukes enable? Drop a 1-kiloton bomb on a Chechnyan neighborhood in Russia? That hardly seems less insane. What sort of problems can low-yield nukes address that cruise missiles or guided non-nuclear bombs couldn't? EDIT: > "A 5kt nuke that blows up a roughly 150m radius and causes negligible fallout could be used [...] without causing massive diplomatic problems." I have serious doubts. Even a single atmospheric test of such a nuke in the middle of Nevada would probably cause a diplomatic incident. Why would using such a nuke on foreign soil cause any less trouble?

HenryKissinger 7y ago
Chechnya is Russian sovereign territory. I doubt Russia would take kindly to the US dropping a small nuke on their territory, no matter how weak, or where, or why. > What sort of problems can low-yield nukes address that cruise missiles or guided non-nuclear bombs couldn't? Their sheer explosive power? It would take thousands of cruise missiles to destroy 1945 Hiroshima.
- Swizec 7y ago
  > Chechnya is Russian sovereign territory. I doubt Russia would take kindly to the US dropping a small nuke on their territory, no matter how weak, or where, or why. Isn’t this how WW1 started? Hey your terrorists killed our Duke!! Yeah so? You gotta let us send in the army or at least the police!! No thanks aaaand alliances pulled everyone into a gruesome war
Aeolun 7y ago
Cheap and huge explosions?
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Nukes are expensive. Small size/weight is what you get for that money. For example, if you want a 1kt bunker buster using conventional explosives that's gonna be a heck of a bomb and therefore greatly limited in where/when/how it can be used. A 1kt nuke could fit in a JDAM sized form factor and be dropped by pretty much any military aircraft. Similarly, if you want to decimate a city with conventional bombs you'll need to deliver a heck of a lot of bombs. With nukes you only need one.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I'm not sure why you've been downvoted, what you say seems true. Smaller nukes are not necessarily efficient nukes. The smallest nukes, using a "linear implosion" design, are very inefficient. A W48 warhead with a tiny 0.072 kt yield has more Plutonium than the 21 kt "fat man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki. (~13kg for the former, <7kg for the later) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nostrademons 7y ago
Find the training camp that assembled and delivered the nuke and nuke that (or drone it, if you have the logistics for that, but the point of nuclear deterrence is to assure that if you use nukes you die). The point of having low-yield nukes is so you can do precision targeting. A 20mt nuke that blows up a whole city cannot be used if there's a danger that fallout might fall on friendly or neutral territory. A 5kt nuke that blows up a roughly 150m radius and causes negligible fallout could be used on a small training camp, or even a warehouse in a lightly-populated suburban area, without causing massive diplomatic problems.
- mnemonicsloth 7y ago
  Use of nukes is punished with annihilation. That's the unwritten rule. Since it's unwritten, a lot of the fine print is unwritten too, like how soon and by what mechanism. Maybe, if you nuke your 150m radius it sets in motion a chain of events that five years later culminates in nuclear war. You have no way to know whether you would be opening the door to that. Since the loss is effectively infinite and the probability is finite, the expected value of this action is infinite and negative. People want certainty when it comes to nuclear weapons. The only way to get that is not to use them.
  - cloakandswagger 7y ago
    It makes no sense why use of a small-scale nuclear weapon would somehow escalate to armageddon. It seems to hinge on the assumption that government leaders are completely irrational robots that, once a nuclear weapon of a size equivalent to a conventional bomb is used, take that as license to use nuclear weapons of any size. It's much more likely the "unwritten rule" you speak of would just shift, where nuclear weapons of a certain payload (probably equivalent to conventional weapons) would be acceptable for use. Government leaders, being acutely aware of MAD, would clearly communicate the new accepted boundaries and proceed from there.
- ddalex 7y ago
  Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think somebody already used no-fallout small-yield tactical nukes in Syria, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsbUYJsH_SI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsbUYJsH_SI
AmericanChopper 7y ago
The parent comment is complete nonsense. The motive for making low-yield weapons is the same as the motive for making high-yield ones. Deterrent. You can simply look this up in the DoD’s Nuclear Posture Review: > Russia’s belief that limited nuclear first use, potentially including low-yield weapons, can provide such an advantage is based, in part, on Moscow’s perception that its greater number and variety of non-strategic nuclear systems provide a coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict. Recent Russian statements on this evolving nuclear weapons doctrine appear to lower the threshold for Moscow’s first-use of nuclear weapons. Russia demonstrates its perception of the advantage these systems provide through numerous exercises and statements. Correcting this mistaken Russian perception is a strategic imperative. > To address these types of challenges and preserve deterrence stability, the United States will enhance the flexibility and range of its tailored deterrence options. To be clear, this is not intended to, nor does it enable, “nuclear war-fighting.” Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression. It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely. https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/201... To say the purpose is tactical use in war is franking a baseless conspiracy theory, relying on flawed logic that can easily be debunked.

HenryKissinger 7y ago

Chechnya is Russian sovereign territory. I doubt Russia would take kindly to the US dropping a small nuke on their territory, no matter how weak, or where, or why. > What sort of problems can low-yield nukes address that cruise missiles or guided non-nuclear bombs couldn't? Their sheer explosive power? It would take thousands of cruise missiles to destroy 1945 Hiroshima.

Swizec 7y ago
> Chechnya is Russian sovereign territory. I doubt Russia would take kindly to the US dropping a small nuke on their territory, no matter how weak, or where, or why. Isn’t this how WW1 started? Hey your terrorists killed our Duke!! Yeah so? You gotta let us send in the army or at least the police!! No thanks aaaand alliances pulled everyone into a gruesome war

Aeolun 7y ago

Cheap and huge explosions?

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Nukes are expensive. Small size/weight is what you get for that money. For example, if you want a 1kt bunker buster using conventional explosives that's gonna be a heck of a bomb and therefore greatly limited in where/when/how it can be used. A 1kt nuke could fit in a JDAM sized form factor and be dropped by pretty much any military aircraft. Similarly, if you want to decimate a city with conventional bombs you'll need to deliver a heck of a lot of bombs. With nukes you only need one.
- catalogia 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you've been downvoted, what you say seems true. Smaller nukes are not necessarily efficient nukes. The smallest nukes, using a "linear implosion" design, are very inefficient. A W48 warhead with a tiny 0.072 kt yield has more Plutonium than the 21 kt "fat man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki. (~13kg for the former, <7kg for the later) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nostrademons 7y ago

Find the training camp that assembled and delivered the nuke and nuke that (or drone it, if you have the logistics for that, but the point of nuclear deterrence is to assure that if you use nukes you die). The point of having low-yield nukes is so you can do precision targeting. A 20mt nuke that blows up a whole city cannot be used if there's a danger that fallout might fall on friendly or neutral territory. A 5kt nuke that blows up a roughly 150m radius and causes negligible fallout could be used on a small training camp, or even a warehouse in a lightly-populated suburban area, without causing massive diplomatic problems.

mnemonicsloth 7y ago
Use of nukes is punished with annihilation. That's the unwritten rule. Since it's unwritten, a lot of the fine print is unwritten too, like how soon and by what mechanism. Maybe, if you nuke your 150m radius it sets in motion a chain of events that five years later culminates in nuclear war. You have no way to know whether you would be opening the door to that. Since the loss is effectively infinite and the probability is finite, the expected value of this action is infinite and negative. People want certainty when it comes to nuclear weapons. The only way to get that is not to use them.
- cloakandswagger 7y ago
  It makes no sense why use of a small-scale nuclear weapon would somehow escalate to armageddon. It seems to hinge on the assumption that government leaders are completely irrational robots that, once a nuclear weapon of a size equivalent to a conventional bomb is used, take that as license to use nuclear weapons of any size. It's much more likely the "unwritten rule" you speak of would just shift, where nuclear weapons of a certain payload (probably equivalent to conventional weapons) would be acceptable for use. Government leaders, being acutely aware of MAD, would clearly communicate the new accepted boundaries and proceed from there.
ddalex 7y ago
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think somebody already used no-fallout small-yield tactical nukes in Syria, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsbUYJsH_SI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsbUYJsH_SI

AmericanChopper 7y ago

The parent comment is complete nonsense. The motive for making low-yield weapons is the same as the motive for making high-yield ones. Deterrent. You can simply look this up in the DoD’s Nuclear Posture Review: > Russia’s belief that limited nuclear first use, potentially including low-yield weapons, can provide such an advantage is based, in part, on Moscow’s perception that its greater number and variety of non-strategic nuclear systems provide a coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict. Recent Russian statements on this evolving nuclear weapons doctrine appear to lower the threshold for Moscow’s first-use of nuclear weapons. Russia demonstrates its perception of the advantage these systems provide through numerous exercises and statements. Correcting this mistaken Russian perception is a strategic imperative. > To address these types of challenges and preserve deterrence stability, the United States will enhance the flexibility and range of its tailored deterrence options. To be clear, this is not intended to, nor does it enable, “nuclear war-fighting.” Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression. It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely. https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/201... To say the purpose is tactical use in war is franking a baseless conspiracy theory, relying on flawed logic that can easily be debunked.