Bought my first house

[Smitty-48]

...and immediately after that? How does that not escalate into a strategic exchange?

well because MAD is in effect at the strategic level

MAD is effective at deterring America & Russia from nuking each others cities

that simply doesn't extend all the way to a theater war in Europe, nor even the China Seas

[Martin Hash]

[Smitty-48]

in the case of China for example, could they use tactical nuclear weapons at sea ?

you're not willing to die for Hong Kong, so you're certainly willing to die over some naval force in the middle of the ocean

at the theater level, you're not nuking cities, so it's not within the confines of countervalue which is what MAD is about

[Smitty-48]

in the case of tactical nuclear weapons at sea, you don't even detonate them on the surface

you detonate them underwater to create a shockwave which rips the bottoms out of the ships

so there isn't even much to see, there is no Castle Bravo mushroom cloud rising to the stratosphere

it might not even be clear that it was a nuclear strike at first

might take some time to figure out what happened, and even who was responsible

[SuburbanFarmer]

...and immediately after that? How does that not escalate into a strategic exchange?

well because MAD is in effect at the strategic level

MAD is effective at deterring America & Russia from nuking each others cities

that simply doesn't extend all the way to a theater war in Europe, nor even the China Seas

X nukes Ys naval group, Y nukes Xs colonial holding, X sends everything.

[Smitty-48]

...and immediately after that? How does that not escalate into a strategic exchange?

well because MAD is in effect at the strategic level

MAD is effective at deterring America & Russia from nuking each others cities

that simply doesn't extend all the way to a theater war in Europe, nor even the China Seas

X nukes Ys naval group, Y nukes Xs colonial holding, X sends everything.

Y is more likely to just sit there stunned in the face of X using nukes, arguing amongst themselves as to what to do about it

Y being a bunch of cats who have to be herded into doing anything at all

[Smitty-48]

nobody is going to launch an all out nuclear attack with countervalue weapons against cities, on purpose

that would only happen by catastrophic mistake, otherwise known as launch on false warning

[Fife]

Smits, when did nukes become viable tactical options? Or was that considered a possibility right from the start?

The war with Japan may not be a good example, as only the US had the weapon, and it was brand new. I'm wondering how different tactical deployment might have gone through the years if the first use had not been against civilian cities in such a decisive an irrevocable way.

[Smitty-48]

Smits, when did nukes become viable tactical options? Or was that considered a possibility right from the start?

they started out tactical and moved to strategic after

at first America planned to use single stage "Atomic" bombs like any other weapon in the arsenal

that all changed in 1953 with the arrival of the two stage thermonuclear "Hydrogen" bomb

tactical nuclear weapons these days are also H-bombs, they're just very small ones, like B61-12

the B61 is a so called "Dial-a-Yield" bomb

you can set the bomb to be as big as 340 kilotons

or if you want to take out a very small target, you could dial it down to just 1 kiloton

[Smitty-48]

the scariest bomb in the American arsenal now is W76-2

that's the W76 warhead used on the Navy's Trident missiles, the original version being 100 kilotons yield

W76-2 is the same MIRV, except it's only 2-5 kilotons yield

there is one purpose for a warhead like that

to use the Trident missiles from the sea, in a theater counterforce role

that's not deterrence, there is no deterrence value to W76-2 at all

in fact in undermines deterrence in favour of "use them or lose them"