This scares me a little. It seems like we are looking for a means by which to make the casual use of nuclear weapons more acceptable. And I only say “casual” because the Pentagon’s position seems to be that the only excuse we will need to drop one of these bombs is that we have discovered a deeply burried or fortified target like a chemical arsenal. But that’s just my knee-jerk reaction arising out of my self-preservation instinct.
Now does it become somehow more acceptable, or less heinous to use nukes in the event we become involved in another war? Does it even have to come to war for us to be able to rationalize the use of one of these “surgical strike” nukes?
Less collateral damage. Hmmm. Fewer civilians turned into beef jerky. Bombs are looking better all the time!
I’m nervously anticipating the Administration’s view on this, but in the mean time what do the enlightened people of Great debates think?
Theres a reason why Giraffes only compete with their necks and completely avoid using their legs. They know that they would disembowel each other if they tried to kick each other, and the risk is not worth the reward.
And their’s a reason why only two nuclear bombs have been dropped in warfare throughtout world history, but our top political and military experts can’t entirely agree what it is. But I fail to see how expanding our nuclear arsenal to include more specific weapons would deter anybody.
I hereby nominate that quote for the Painfull-Obvious Award of the Week. I mean, if low-yield warheads were never invented, they couldn’t possibly be used, right?
Anyway… we don’t need low-yield warheads to take out political/military leaders hiding out in bunkers. We have Navy SEAL teams to do that.
Actually, there already exists a very small nuclear device (about the size of a football or smaller), developed in the 60’s, I believe… Rocket or mortar launched (I forget), it had a blast radius of about 2 miles. Unfortunately, the launching system had a range of (wait for it…) only about 1.5 miles, so the crew had to dig a trench, fire, and hide before it went off.
Understandably, this type of thing never got widely used, at least by the US.
I suppose the argument for nukes in underground attacks is that they are ideal to make SURE that a bad bug (biowarfare and such) was dead, although a high explosive would probably do the trick… it would just take a LOT of TNT, versus a little nuclear/thermonuclear device.
Last thing… and I’m donning asbestos for this… but the reason we might want micro-nukes is that they make for a great extension of MAD, and while scary, MAD works rather well…
Different device. As far as I know, nukes explode UPWARDS… and will hardly rattle a bunker even if it’s only several hundred feet from the surface (correct me if I’m wrong, people… I know it’s relatively shallow compared to a nuke’s blast radius).
These “new nukes” (no nukes is good nukes! Yuk yuk yuk) are designed to propel the blast DOWN, destroying anything under the surface.
There are many other comparable examples of nuclear warheads being used on weapons systems that aren’t just “area effect” bombs:
Nuclear depth charges, usually launched by ASROC
Nuclear air-to-air missiles, like the Genie
Nuclear torpedoes
Those have been around for years and would obviously cause few civilian casualties but I’ve never heard anyone suggest nuclear war was imminent because they were available.
But now we have pinpoint nukes that seem somehow “okay” to drop for no other reason than we’ve detected a deeply burried no-no like a chemical or biowarfare stockpile.
If we start using these nukes “just because we can”, that may send the message to agreesor nations that equivalent (nuclear) retaliation is justified. Now since they don’t have these pinpoint bombs, whaddaya suppose they’ll use?
I don’t see why armored weapons have to be carrying nuclear warheads. It would seem to me that detonating even a limited tactical warhead one mile underground would cause staggering ecological damage, including but not limited to the poisoning of the groundwater, annihilating of surrounding vegetation, and a sudden, catastrophic change in the distribution of surface matter.
Sure, this doesn’t vaporize collateral material at the moment of detonation, but isn’t the damage still done? Can’t we just armor up some conventional warheads to take out a bunker?
No offense, but this is something that you really SHOULD know. It has been the essential strategy of US defence throughout the Cold War. Mutual Assured Destruction is the threat to send overwhelming destruction against an attacking enemy that threatened America’s cities. Directed mainly toward the USSR, of course, but also toward anyone else that was likely to cause destruction. China, for instance. A lot of people thought this was a bad strategy to choose (which is why SDI has so many supporters), but the strategy wasn’t really chosen – it was thrust upon us. Aside from outright surrender or total war against our enemies, what other choice do we have? SDI wasn’t, and still isn’t, practical. “Live and Let Live” isn’t a strategy – what do you do when someone threatens you? You’re forced into one of the above choices.
This is very important and very recent history – and still extremely relevant.
Mutually Assured Destruction… basically, the concept that if both sides have the ability to wipe out the other, then neither will initiate hostilities…
