(CNN) — Russia announced this Monday that it will carry out “in the near future” exercises with non-strategic nuclear weapons (also called “tactical”), after the Kremlin condemned what it called an “unprecedented” escalation of tension by the West.
The Russian General Staff began preparations to conduct the exercises “with missile formations of the Southern Military District involving aviation as well as naval forces,” the country’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. “During the exercises, will carry out a set of measures to practice the issues of preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons,” he added.
This is the most recent occasion in which, in the midst of its war against Ukraine, Russia leaves the issue of nuclear weapons on the table. Previously, in September 2022, President Vladimir Putin threatened to resort to them.
At the time, Putin warned that “in the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country, and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapons systems available to us. I’m not bragging.”
What are non-strategic or tactical nuclear weapons?
The Russian weapons arsenal includes an estimated total of 5,580 nuclear warheads (deployed, non-deployed, in storage or awaiting dismantling), of which just over 1,800 are “non-strategic” warheads, also known as tactical nuclear weapons, according to Nuclear Threat. Initiative (NTI).
With more than 1,800 non-strategic nuclear warheads, Russia is the country with the largest reserve of weapons in the world in this category, adds the NTI.
Tactical warheads refer to those designed for use on a limited battlefield, for example to destroy a tank column or an aircraft carrier battle group if used at sea. These warheads, with explosive yields of 10 to 100 kilotons of dynamite, are also called “low yield.”
By contrast, Russia’s most powerful “strategic” nuclear warheads have explosive yields of 500 to 800 kilotons and are designed to destroy entire cities, and then some.
The reference to “low yield” for tactical weapons is somewhat misleading, since explosive yields of 10 to 100 kilotons of dynamite are still sufficient to cause great destruction, as the world discovered in 1945 when the US dropped atomic bombs. about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
Those bombs were equivalent to about 15 and 21 kilotons of dynamite, respectively, putting them within the range of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.
And it is because of this devastating capability that many people say that there is really no difference between a strategic weapon and a tactical weapon when used in war.
“I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘tactical nuclear weapon,'” former US Defense Secretary James Mattis said during a congressional hearing in 2018. “Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a change of strategic game,” Mattis said.
What would happen if Russia deployed a tactical nuclear weapon?
Russia (and before it, the Soviet Union) has manufactured and maintained a large stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons.
The initial thinking was that using a nuclear bomb on a battlefield would give leaders the option of carrying out a decisive attack that could prevent defeat without resorting to the use of their largest nuclear weapons, which, after a counterattack, would lead to a “civilization-ending nuclear exchange,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
On its website, the organization calls such thinking “erroneous and dangerous.”
“Tactical nuclear weapons… introduce greater ambiguity, increasing the possibility that a country will think it can get away with a limited attack,” the organization said.
Some analyzes support that theory, but the reality is likely far from that.
“American war games predict that a conflict involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons will quickly spiral out of control,” the Union of Concerned Scientists blog said.
“A Princeton University simulation of a US-Russia conflict beginning with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon predicts a rapid escalation that would leave more than 90 million dead and injured,” he said.
In response to Putin’s September 2022 threat, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said the Europe of that year was a much more dangerous place to use nuclear weapons than the Japan of 1945, which had a smaller population and was relatively isolated.
Today in Europe, “a single nuclear detonation would likely kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and injure many more; radioactive fallout could contaminate large areas in several countries,” ICAN noted on its website.
“Emergency services would not be able to respond effectively and widespread panic would trigger mass movements of people and severe economic disruption. Multiple detonations, of course, would be much worse,” he added.
