Ah, but the thing is, the US has a choice:[ul][li]worry about annoying a few of its allies by threatening to use nukes, bearing in mind that these allies will return to normal relations after the war, or[/li]put the fear of God into the remaining terrorists / Sadaam / whoever else gets in the way, thus hopefully bringing this WoT to a speedy conclusion.[/ul]I think the better way to fight a war is to keep your enemies on their toes, not pussy-foot around allies who will make no difference anyway.
Allies always matter, especially when you lose them.
Where do our injured troops go for hospitalization? Germany.
What countries must our aircraft overfly to get where their going? Packistan, India, and many others.
Where are our immediate logistics bases? Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia, and others.
Who’s guarding our airbases in Afganistan? Canadians.
Who’s on the ground fighting alongside us? Austrailians.
Who’s pulling up the mines and UXO? Germans and Danes.
There are a lot of others who are in there with us, helping in myriad ways. I’ve only named a handful.
Think about who we might piss-off, and what the cost of that anger might be, before you go advocating popping nukes.
The way to maintain the highest possible moral ground is to use the least possible force consitant with getting the job done. Yes, there will be causalties, but no war goes without, and this is war. Our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen know this, and go in understanding this. They’re winning, let’s not go and tarnish their effort and sacrifice by throwing away the results they’ve fought for: A world more at peace. Using Nukes will only polarize the world.
I don’t want to say that I have no qualms about using a 5 kiloton conventional warhead because I don’t know what the effects of that are. But I do know that if you are using tactical nuclear weapons you are probably going to be using them on a battlefield, and if that’s the case you likely will want your troops to take the territory formerly held by the nuked enemy. Do you really think the equipment of our soldiers (and I won’t even mention what, say, an Afghan is wearing) will protect them from the residual radiation and other remnants of the explosion? Hell, complaints about Agent Orange were pretty bad, what do you think we’d get with this?
And yes, I would say that I am afraid of the word “nuke” being used. Until they come up with Nerf Brand Thermonuclear Devices™, I am sure I will remain so.
Not too different from a conventional weapon, I would imagine. The advantage the nuke has is not necessarily in strength (a conventional bomb can easily get up to .5 kilotons), but in the fact that it would be a lot smaller, and thusly, easier to deliver to the target.
I’ve seen several references to a “.5kT conventional bomb” and even a “5kT conventional bomb.”
Let’s all remember the math here- kilo means thousand, ton means 2,000 pounds. In this context, it refers to equivalent explosive power to that much TNT (a pretty powerful explosive).
.5kT= 1,000,000 (one MILLLLLLION) pounds of TNT
5kT= 10,000,000 (TEN MILLLLLLLION) pounds of TNT
Everyone remember that huge “Daisy Cutter” bomb? It is 15,000 lb and has to be pushed out of the back of a BIG cargo plane. 15,000 lb = 7.5 tons, or 0.0075kT, or about 1/66th as big as a 0.5kT conventional bomb
You neglected all the rather strenously allied nations in the middle east, whom the US -depends- upon for this fighting, that would almost certainly pull support if the US used nukes. Someone else already put together a pretty thorough list of nations involved, and I don’t think a single one of the middle-east nations would remain supporting this if nukes were used.
I don’t think there are any tactical nuclear weapons designed to penetrate before detonating. The only nukes I remember designed to take out subteranean targets were the strategic nukes targeted at opposing nuclear missile silos, and those were significantly more powerfull than a tac-nuke.
When everyone is reffering to kilotons here, they’re talking about yield, not bomb weight. The daisy cutter has a significantly higher yield-to-weight than a normal explosive bomb. I don’t remember the exact ratio, but the only reference I can find puts an FAE (Closest comparison I could find to the daisy cutter, which isn’t strictly an FAE) with an explosive factor of 5+, or at least 5 times more powerfull by weight than TNT. The daisy cutter would probably be at least that powerfull.
[sarcasm]What? kT is a measure of explosive energy? I had no idea.[/sarcasm]
I am well aware of the difference between weight and yield. The point I apparently didn’t make too clearly is that a .5kT conventional bomb would be 1 million pounds of TNT (or two hundred thousand pounds of an explosive 5 times as powerful as TNT). There is no such beast as a 200,000 pound (plus the overhead weight of the casing, fusing assembly, etc.) bomb that would be deliverable by anything less than a freight train or cargo ship (much less a 1 million pound bomb). As far as I know, the bad guys aren’t hanging out in a readily accessible port city or near a rail line.
And a BLU-82 (the “daisy cutter”) is definitely nothing like a FAE. It is a 15,000 lb bomb containing 12,600 lb of GSX slurry- aluminum powder plus ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) and polystyrene (styrofoam).
The FAE bombs in the US inventory are much smaller- 500 lb and 2000 lb. Using your multiplier of 5x as powerful as TNT (I have not found an independent confirmation of this multiplier), that gives an explosive yield of 5 T, or 0.005kT- two orders of magnitude less than a 0.5kT bomb or three orders of magnitude less than a 5kT bomb.
China probably wouldn’t use strategic nukes on us, because they only have a couple of hundred and their delivery systems are not very reliable. They know if they nuked our cities we would nuke theirs in return, and we would do much more damage. I CAN see us getting into a large scale semi-conventional war with them, though, where tactical nukes could come in handy.
Anyway, why should we only prepare for scenarios that could happen right now? We should look ahead, and a lot could happen in a few decades. The Russians are not a threat currently, but that could change. Also, a unified Europe could conceivably oppose U.S. interests in the future and would be a formidable adversary. Look at our former enemies, often they were friendly with us only a couple of decades before we went to war with them. The U.S.A. will probably not continue to be the world’s only superpower forever.
There are other conventional explosives aside from TNT. You really didn’t think that a Pheonix missile was just a glorified stick of dynamite, did you?
In other words, you’re wrong. There have been conventional weapons that surpass the strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Well, I have to admit I was kind of confused when you were comparing a 0.5kt nuclear yield to the -weight- of a daisy cutter instead of its explosive yield…
Well, first off, the little scenario I was detailing was -about- tactical nukes (Since that’s the topic of this thread), and in responce to a US first-strike. And “only a couple hundred” is quite enough to cause some serious problems, even if they aren’t terribly reliable.
I’d -definatly- be interested to hear anything about conventional bombs that powerfull… 
And besides, if the U.S which is the world leading democracy drops a nuke or two. Why wouldn’t India, Pakistan or North Corea (if they have one) do the same. No one uses nukes because it is well known that the country that does so would be a pariah in internationla comunity. I think that U.S.A can get away with it but still it would be a precedent.
Cite, please?
In my limited research last night, (limited by what is published on the Web… off to the old library later) I did not find a military explosive with a relative strength (to TNT) of more than about 2.
As I’ve said before (and will repeat), there is no such beast. The bomb at Hiroshima had a yield of about 15kT, or 30 times as big as this mythical “0.5kT conventional bomb” that would be equivalent to 1 MILLION POUNDS of TNT.
You made the claim that a FAE explosive (I assume you mean ethylene oxide specifically, as this is what the US uses) has a relative strength of 5 or more. Please provide a cite for this. I have the necessary formulas for determining Relative Strengths, but I don’t feel like:
- balancing reactions
- finding the physical constants (reaction rates, heats of formation) for explosives and reaction products
- doing the math
4, or saying Hi, Opal!
Politically, it’s downright ludicrous. If a nation is going to use nukes, it had better be because it has its back against the wall. To use one to get at 1000 poorly equipped bad guys in caves is silly - and it isn’t exactly a vote of confidence for the fighting men on the ground.
If you really don’t give a rat’s ass about foreign relations, at least do it right and use gas instead. Heavier-than-air nervegas would do the caves just fine, and troops with modern NBC gear could mop up with impunity. It wouldn’t be any worse for the reputation. Not interested ? Thought so.
sirjamesp offers the following observations:
Charmed, I’m sure. And a resounding thank you on behalf of those of my countrymen who fight and die right next to yours.
Oh, the hijack: There are no conventional weapons in the 0.5 kT range, much less in the 20 kT (Hiroshima) range.
AFAIK, the biggest conventional explosion ever was either the Halifax axplosion in 1917 (ammo ship caught fire, about 200 tons of TNT and other explosives went up) or the Messines Ridge attack in WWI (about 450 tons of conventional explosives in tunnels under the ridge). I might be wrong, of course.
S. Norman
First, Spiny, most of us understand and greatly appreciate the help.
Next: Who out there really thinks it’s militarily useful for blast light infantry hiding in caves with a million pounds-equivalent of TNT? Due to the nature of most of the targets, you’d need one nuke per cave, roughly.
Can you say “Massive, wasteful overkill”? Good, I knew you could…
Now, can you say “International Political Consequences Lasting Many Years”…?
We can’t play isolationist any more folks, and nukes are main battlefield weapons, intended for stopping large formations of rapidly manuevering mechanized enemies, not prying light infantry out of holes in the ground. (oh, and even the smallest nukes, with yields around 10 tons, are overkill, and too damned expesnsive for the purpose, to boot)
Could we please give the military and government at least a modicum of credit here? If certain uses of nuclear weapons are ‘stupid’ or counter-productive, I trust that the military wouldn’t use them in that way. No one is about to start firing dozens of nuclear weapons at every little hidey-hole that we find.
If they think theater nuclear weapons are important to have in the arsenal, I feel confident that they have some well thought-out reasons for believing this. Are you at all familiar with the rationale for these weapons? Or are we just setting up easy straw men and knocking them down?
**Professor Marc Herold ** has been discredited numbeous times in his ‘calculations’ on Afgan. deaths. Basically he pulled that number out of his @$$.
Back to the OP - we don’t use them because we don’t have to. other weapons can do just as much damage. tact. nukes are a weapon we chose to keep in reserve.
I never mentioned actually using nukes - I was talking about threatening to use nukes. In fact, if you read the entire post, I was more specifically talking about not ruling out nukes. Like I said, in war, all options should remain open until it is over.
I am sure the US government know as well as you do that dropping a nuke in this region would not be a great idea if we wish to maintain some stability here. However, this does not mean that you rule the option out. The enemy needs to know that if, when weighing up the pros and cons, the military chiefs favour dropping a nuke, then a nuke WILL be dropped. The threat of this tiny possibility is a powerful weapon in itself.
Oh jeez, enough with the Oprah-esque offence.
First off, I’m not American.
Second, whilst the US surely appreciates the efforts of it’s allies in Afghanistan, do you really imagine that if the Danes, Germans, or hell, even the Brits themselves, pulled out of Afghanistan 'coz their governments take offence at the fact that the US refuses to rule out nukes, do you think the US effort would be doomed? Of course not. The job might be more difficult, but it would still be completed.
No matter how much it offends the sensibilities of the US’s allies, the most important thing is that the US completes it mission. Any short-term unease amongst its allies is a price worth paying.
1 - Never make a threat you’re not willing to back-up.
2 - The very threat of using Nukes, especially where they’re clearly inappropriate, would cost the US allies, the ability to continue to prosecute the war against al Qaeda/Taliban, and decades of carefully built-up international goodwill.
:. Threatening to use them is a losing tactic and a losing strategy.
No, it’s not a powerful weapon, unless you consider making ourselves look stupid and dangerous as “powerful”. Most of the world is going to look at a threat to use nukes as clearly unsupported bluster, and will laugh up their sleeves at the “stupid American bullies”. Simultaneously, it will give nations around the world loads of political ammunition with which to snipe at us for decades to come. Additionally, in those few nations that do believe the threat, it will confirm in their minds that they’re justified making unrestricted terror war on the US, while at the same time remove much of the sympathy we now have towards our cause. It’ll hand Bin Laden a moral victory.
Of course, Yes.
Do you honestly think we can keep prosecuting the war against al Qaeda / Taliban without the support of the Afgan Gov’t (such as it is), without the support and permission of Pakistan to use their bases and airspace, without the support and permission of Uzbekistan to use their bases and airspace? Have you taken a close look at the map? The US must have the goodwill of at least some of the nations surrounding Afganistan in order to continue the fight. Also, losing the Western Allies wouldn’t just make this a “little” more expensive and difficult, it’ make it a lot more expensive, likely requiring, at minimum, a doubling of our resources and assets already in the area, assets which right now are already stretched thin-to-the-point-of-breaking, supporting all our other obligations around the world.
The only other choice is making war on everyone who doesn’t cooperate with us, and that would make us far worse than Bin Laden, as now we’d not just be hunting down terrorists, but we’d be barging about the world, violating countries simply because they were in the way. You can’t be a good guy, and act like a bad guy. You’re one, or the other. Or are you sugesting that might-makes-right, and that the US should just do whatever pleases it at the moment?
Uh-Uh. This is a global concern, nukes are political before they’re military, and you don’t justify acting (or threatening to act) like a bull in a china shop for so little gain. Also, the unease won’t be short-term: We’re still getting grief over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, 50+ years later. Do you really think a threat like his will be laughed-off? I don’t. Further, it’s not just our allies with which we have to deal. There are a lot of other nations on this planet, and we have to deal with them all, one way or another. Why on earth would we (the US) want to make that so much harder than it already is?
We’ll complete the mission, alright, but we don’t need no stinkin’ nukes, nor any threat of sinkin’ nukes to do it. We’re better than that.
This:
Should read like this: