Let’s say we’re 1 or two decades in the future in a world war that’s as merciless as the Eastern Front of WWII. Every soldier as zealous as a kamikaze. Maybe a war between Skynet and Skynet_2.0, the patched version we saw at the end of Terminator 2.
How would that change war? How would tactics and strategy change?
It would be relatively short lived as far as the actual fighting goes I think. Might depend on a number of factors though, for how things go after that first weapon is deployed and detonated. If its an all out, fight to the death nuclear brawl, it will be short fast nasty and brutal. If neither side cares about the short term destruction or the long term devastation resulting from nuclear war.
Not sure tactics or strategy would factor into it much beyond “get as many of our weapons launched as fast as possible before our own capabilities are wiped out by the enemy’s weapons”
It would be short. And then everyone would be dead.
ETA:Ninja’d in about the same amount of time as the war would last.
Aside from known locations of enemy nukes, what would the targets be?
Note that the OP presumes that missile defense systems can use nukes too.
For first strike nuclear weapons whose location is known, it could be pretty simple once you know you’ll saturate local defenses. For second strike nukes of either side, it could get more complex than that. You would want to keep some nukes to strike at submarines, TELs, aircraft that you’re not seeing right now.
So presume it’s Skynet vs Skynet_2.0 and they’re still fighting after every human is dead.
Pretty much my first thought.
Tactics and strategy themselves introduce reasons for hesitance. Large relatively indiscriminate weapons produce issues for the user not just the target. There’s a reason that the late Cold War generally saw warheads become less powerful as delivery mechanisms got more accurate. I’m having a hard time picturing what “no hesitance” looks like.
Me too. I’m thinking that it would have an analogous effect to developments that took place from the US Civil War to WWI: Before that, most of the fighting happened in close ranks because you wanted the increased control/morale of tight ranks and also to have local superiority at the point of contact in case of melee. In about half a century, close ranks nearly disappeared except for a few edge cases. A company that fought in close ranks in WWI, WWII or today would be a bullet magnet and lose a platoon for every shell that hit.
Nukes would do to operational dispersal what MGs and indirect fire shells did to tactical dispersal; If a 250kg warhead has an 5 psi airblast radius of 7km (enough to collapse most buildings), keeping several of your units within a few kilometers of each other will be as foolish as fighting like this today: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
There would still be advantages to cooperation, for example by splitting small stealthy spotters with bigger, heavier shooters. That means networked warfare which means datalinks. How would radio-based datalinks fare in a nuclear war? Could nukes, especially those detonated at high altitude, block radio communications? If so, how long could a nuke/EMP disrupt datalinks?
How would EMPs, fallout or other forms of radioactivity affect the ability to use radar or IR sensors?
The warheads were that big because they had to be, given their inaccuracy. Both sides wanted to make efficient use of their atomic material. NATO, and perhaps even the Warsaw Pact, may have taken humanitarian factors into account. But if you’d had Hitler/Stalin/Skynet making those decisions, they wouldn’t have minded erring on the side of overkill.
If you ever do see what “no hesitance” looks like, might I recommend a good pair of shades.
All of you were ninja’d by Tom Lehrer.