And those thermobaric weapons didn't seem to help Russians achieve much. Will tactical nukes make any tangible difference comparing to weeks of shelling? Would Mariupol be in any different shape if it was nuked rather than shelled? Are tactical nukes really a game changer from military perspective?
No idea if it is happening, but if Russia starts to run low on shells and more conventional bombs, maybe they will see it as the only option to continue.
My thinking is that you try every last resort to stop Russia (if it gets to that point) using conventional weapons. The alternative is everyone dies.
Better that 100,000 NATO personnel die in bombarding Russia if we can avoid the alternative.
Feels like a lost cause at that point anyway.
Retaliate too hard with conventional weapons - Russia nukes in response.
Retaliate too harshly with sanctions/cut them off from the world - Russia's economy crumbles, they nuke in response.
Nuke them - They obviously nuke back.
Just a whole bunch of lose-lose scenarios in my mind once that first nuke goes. Scary times.
And those thermobaric weapons didn't seem to help Russians achieve much. Will tactical nukes make any tangible difference comparing to weeks of shelling? Would Mariupol be in any different shape if it was nuked rather than shelled? Are tactical nukes really a game changer from military perspective?
Yes, essentially even a tactical nuke will pretty much deny the bombed area to Ukraines soldiers, and the likely immediate effects from the radiation blast would kill soldiers away from the bast zone. Also it would do more to kill civillians with the thermal pulse and short and long term radiation effects.
Mariupol for example would be blasted in a similar effect. But more civillians would die from the long and short term effects, and that area would be use denied for years.
Tactical nukes can be a game changer against militaries that aren't equipt to fight and survive in a nuclear environment. The problem has always been the command and control in terms of using them. I don't know how it works now, but under the Soviet system, all nukes were controlled not by the army and navy, but the KGB. So by the time you got permission, got the weapons armed and loaded by KGB handlers, the battlefield requirements had likely changed. The American's are more efficient. Once nuclear weapons are authorized their firing and control falls into the hands of the theatre commander, so permission to deploy is a lot faster.
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And those thermobaric weapons didn't seem to help Russians achieve much. Will tactical nukes make any tangible difference comparing to weeks of shelling? Would Mariupol be in any different shape if it was nuked rather than shelled? Are tactical nukes really a game changer from military perspective?
You're underestimating the emotional factor in assessing the impact of a tactical nuke vs a thermobaric bomb vs conventional artillery/rockets/airstrikes. A nuclear attack would create near panic in western democracies and in the Ukrainians themselves, which the Russians would hope would lead them to surrender.
It's similar, but not nearly as strong, as the reaction to chemical weapons.
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It entirely depends on the nukes you're talking about. You're thinking of strategic nuclear weapons, which would be used in a general war and would be used to destroy cities. These are the kinds put on ICBMs or carried by submarines and would be accompanied by nuclear armageddon.
Conversely, tactical nuclear weapons, or battlefield nuclear weapons, have much smaller yields and are the kind most experts fear that Putin would use in Ukraine. The smallest of these can have their yields set to about .3kT and could be used to wipe out an army/section of a city and would not have the same radioactive fallout/wouldn't create nuclear winter.
The other fear is that Russian military doctrine may call for 'escalate to descalate', the idea being that by using a few tactical nuclear weapons the Russians could get NATO to backdown and avoid a strategic nuclear exchange, thereby ending a conflict on terms favourable to Russia.
The escalate to descalate might work if they were fighting Nato. But they are fighting Ukraine who I don't suspect are going to give up the fight (even if it just becomes an insurgency).
If Russia Nuked the Ukraine I suspect the escalation would be NATO involvement directly against all Russian positions in the Ukraine. Air superiority would be established and and a no fly zone enforced and surface troops destroyed.
They wouldn’t touch Russia itself. This would allow a clear response for a line being crossed yet not attack Russian soil.
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Can anyone honestly see a scenario where Russia accepts defeat in Ukraine and retreats? I think they will take things as far as they need to in order to avoid not achieving a victory and the more losses they sustain, the closer we get to that point.
The only wild card is what happens if Putin is removed from the equation somehow. It is really the only egress Russia has where they can just stop the war without a victory because it gives them a scapegoat.
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If Russia Nuked the Ukraine I suspect the escalation would be NATO involvement directly against all Russian positions in the Ukraine. Air superiority would be established and and a no fly zone enforced and surface troops destroyed.
They wouldn’t touch Russia itself. This would allow a clear response for a line being crossed yet not attack Russian soil.
Problem is: air superiority necessitates strikes on Russia itself. The air defences that would shoot down NATO planes are in Russia. It would be impossible to fly over Ukraine without attacking Russia proper.
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Tactical nukes can be a game changer against militaries that aren't equipt to fight and survive in a nuclear environment. The problem has always been the command and control in terms of using them. I don't know how it works now, but under the Soviet system, all nukes were controlled not by the army and navy, but the KGB. So by the time you got permission, got the weapons armed and loaded by KGB handlers, the battlefield requirements had likely changed. The American's are more efficient. Once nuclear weapons are authorized their firing and control falls into the hands of the theatre commander, so permission to deploy is a lot faster.
Tactical nukes are probably just a gateway nuke. After using a few of those, the idea of nuclear war will become normalized and it's a slippery slope after that. I doubt a nuclear war goes straight from "mini" tactical nukes to the Tsar Bomba overnight, but it would likely be a gradual progression to that point.
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The escalate to descalate might work if they were fighting Nato. But they are fighting Ukraine who I don't suspect are going to give up the fight (even if it just becomes an insurgency).
I think in Putins mind using a couple 0.5Kt tactical nukes might be his only way out at this point. He would understand it to be a big gamble but he's pretty much all-in now. His army is being annihilated and air force slowly but steadily taken out. This cannot go on much longer before the operation quickly collapses and he knows what that would mean for him personally.
1 or 2 small nuclear strikes by Russia on military targets and Ukraine may ask for a cease fire, negotiations to end the war and some face saving. Or Biden may respond in kind with a similar strike but only on or near Russian positions inside Ukraine, not a chance he would hit Russian territory. Probably using a B61 ground burst with its yield dialed down to its minimum, delivered by an F-22. Still a tough decision for Biden to make at that point, to use nukes on or near soldiers of a peer nuclear power.
Putin may also go in a slightly different and safer direction to hopefully achieve the same results as an escalate to de escalate attack. This would look like a nuclear test or 2 then see what happens.
This might be slightly “semantics” but again, nuclear war does not mean the end of humanity. This is not to mean or be interpreted that it wouldn’t be an absolute atrocity, that millions and millions of people wouldn’t die, or that I am in any way trying to minimize the insane horrors of what that scenario playing out would look like.
However, much like the way people talk about climate change, extreme hyperbolic words should to be checked. I do not think nuclear war means the end of humans as is being insinuated above. All you have to do is a) look to already established models about the impacts of nuclear war, b) look at blast radius of the largest nuclear weapons and c) use common sense based on simple math.
Not all of Earth is going to be hit by a nuclear bomb and not all humans are going to be destroyed. Estimates of 70-90MM people will likely die, maybe more- and so obviously this would be humanity’s greatest ever tragedy. However the planet has 7B+ people on it. The residents of small town Chile or Madagascar will be fine. It is western countries that will be massively destroyed, but even then, Russia isn’t blasting every square inch of Canada with nukes, there will be pockets one can theoretically be safe.
It’s like George Carlins bit about the Earth and when people worry about the Earth. “The Earth will be fine… it’s the people that will be ####ed” (paraphrase). Yes it will be horrendously bad but it will not wipe out humanity. I can understand how this post likely won’t be taken well because it is very arm-chair semantics-like but I just want to point that out because people keep saying it and I do not think that’s quite right based on the number of nuclear bombs that would get deployed. People in Calgary, myself included, however, would likely be a target. Best models I have seen suggest up to 50 “western power” targets would receive multiple nukes and yes this would be a travesty never seen before resulting in huge numbers of dead. It is a terrifying prospect for sure.
