tactical nuclear weapons broke onto the international stage when Russian President Vladimir Putin, faced with battlefield losses in eastern Ukraine, threatened to do so Russia “will exploit all weapon systems at our disposal” if the territorial integrity of Russia is threatened.
Putin characterized the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against the West, which he believes wants to weaken, divide and destroy Russia.
US President Joe Biden has criticized Putin’s blatant nuclear threats against Europe. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg downplayed the threat, saying Putin “he knows very well that a nuclear war must never be fought and cannot be won”.
What are tactical atomic bombs
This is not the first time that Putin has called for nuclear weapons to try to discourage NATO.
Tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called field or non-strategic nuclear weapons, they were designed to be used on the battlefield, for example to counter overwhelming conventional forces such as large infantry and armor formations.
They are smaller than strategic nuclear weapons, like warheads carried by intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Although experts disagree on the precise definitions of tactical nuclear weapons, the characteristics that are usually identified are lower explosive power, measured in kilotons, and short-range vector vehicles.
Tactical nuclear weapons vary in their yields from fractions of 1 kiloton to about 50 kilotonscompared to strategic nuclear weapons, which have yields ranging from about 100 kilotons to more than one megaton, although much more powerful warheads were developed during the Cold War.
As a reference, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had 15 kilotonshence some tactical nuclear weapons are capable of widespread destruction.
The largest conventional bomb, the Mother of All Bombs or MOAB, that the United States dropped has a power of 0.011 kilotons.
Tactical nuclear weapons delivery systems also tend to have shorter ranges.usually less than 500 kilometers, compared to strategic nuclear weapons, which are often designed to cross continents.
Russian tactical atomic bombs
Russia has retained more tactical nuclear weapons, estimated at around 2,000.
Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons can be deployed from ships, aircraft and ground forces. Most are deployed on air-to-surface, short-range ballistic missilesgravity bombs and depth charges dropped by tactical and medium-range bombers, or naval anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedoes.
These missiles are mostly held in reserve in Russia’s central depots.
On the other hand, Russia has upgraded its delivery systems to be able to carry nuclear or conventional bombs. Concern about these dual-capacity delivery systems has increased because Russia has used many of these short-range missile systems, in particular Iskander-M, to bomb Ukraine.
The game is open and everything indicates that Vladimir Putin could use them in the next battles.
Source: Clarin
