No Nukes

There's a bunch of handwringing, both in social media and the more regular kind of media, about nukes, especially with word getting out that the Pentagon may be looking at revising the U.S. policy on the employment of tactical nukes as battlefield weapons against peer adversaries.

People should calm down, because the biggest barrier to us employing tactical nukes right now is that we more or less don't have any, unless you count some B61 gravity bombs. The US military pretty much got out of the tactical nuke biz after the Cold War.

As the article linked below explains:

"The first part of this equation is to look at what Washington actually has and does not have in its cupboards. The primary observation here is that the overwhelming majority of the US nuclear stockpile comprises strategic rather than tactical weapons. Because Russia retains a wide variety of tactical nuclear weapons designed for a variety of purposes, it is sometimes assumed that the United States has attempted to keep a sort of parity. This is pretty much not the case.

The general situation is that the USA has, since early 1990s, largely abolished its ability to use tactical nuclear weapons. President George Bush Sr. started the process in 1991 and the Clinton administration carried it forward. Over a period of several years, the USA removed many nuclear weapons systems from the inventory, decommissioned and dismantled thousands of warheads, and demolished many delivery systems. The Army and Marine Corps completely got out of the nuclear weapon business, and the Navy got away from all but submarine launched strategic nuclear missiles."

Lots of good detail on what was still in the US stockpile at the end of the Cold War and when it got de-milled. You should click through and read the whole thing.

These are not tactical nukes.