Happy 250th Birthday USA! Without you, we'd have nothing; no freedom, no liberty, no humanity, no life worth living. Yes, the USA saved the UK and the Free World in Two World Wars and Cold War 1.0 (you won't know this if you're a fascist or Marxist, or listen to such anti-freedom propaganda from the BBC, however).
ABOVE: US Marine Corps approach ground zero after a 19 kiloton air burst at 1040 feet altitude in preparation for ending the Korean War by training in tactical deployment of battlefield nuclear combat, Nevada Test Site, Exercise Desert Rock IV, May 1, 1952 (Operation Tumbler-Snapper, test Dog). The Korean War ended in 1953, after the election of President Eisenhower, who let it be known he would end the stalemate war by using tactical nuclear weapons if an armistice was not signed. It was. Tactical nuclear weapons openly publicised preparedness (films and photos of tactical nuclear tests, especially th 15 kiloton Grable nuclear cannon fired shell in 1953, helped end the Korean War) actually were a "USE" of nuclear weapons which deterred the invasions that could otherwise has escalated to WWIII. Strategic countervalue nuclear weapons did not prove a credible deterrent to prevent invasions, only to deter escalation to strategic war (the way our gas in WWII deterred the enemy from using gas). Conventional weapons did not deter either World War. We need credible deterrence to end statemate war, collateral damage by conventional weapons, genocide, and massive war expenditure for no useful purpose. This means returning to a tactical nuclear deterrent that's adequate to stop/deter invasions.
FURTHER READING:
1. Dr Adam Lowther, Vice President for Research at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, The Return of Battlefield Nuclear Weapons, Global Security Review, 2024 (linked here):
"The United States’ and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) continued support for Ukraine’s valiant fight to repel a Russian invasion may, ultimately, depending on the state of the conflict, lead Russia to employ one or a small number of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. A conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan could also lead to a similar use of nuclear weapons. ... Russia, which fields an arsenal of at least 2,000 such nuclear weapons, began modernizing its arsenal of intra-theater nuclear missiles more than a decade ago. These weapons can rapidly strike European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member-states—primarily with lower yield warheads. ... In short, Russia would seek a fait accompli using one or a small number of lowyield nuclear weapons in a limited capacity on the battlefield, for which NATO has no equal response ... NATO’s dual-cable aircraft capability—fighter jets armed with B-61 nuclear gravity bombs—is not a combat-ready force that can effectively counter Russian nuclear use on a battlefield. ...
"Russia likely maintains 3,000–6,000 intra-theater nuclear weapons that vary from low to high yield and short to intermediate range. ... there is a very real need for the United States military to retrain for operating in a post–nuclear detonation environment. ... Putin came very close to using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine during the fall of 2022. ... the “nuclear taboo” is a recipe for getting caught unprepared. ... the Russians now understand that American sanctions and other threats are largely harmless. ... Putin found alternative outlets for Russia exports (petroleum) and found alternate sources of imports—including military supplies. Rather than breaking Russia, American action drove China, Iran, North Korea, and Iran together. ... Even a reluctant Biden administration, now that it is coming to an end, tossed the disarmament community’s ostrich strategy into the dustheap of history."
2. AD1210925 Expanding low yield battlefield nuclear weapon capabilities by Major Weinmeister, AD1210925 (linked here), 2023, stresses necessity for a return to credible tactical nuclear deterrence to reduce risk of megadeath WWIII threat:
3. Mark B. Schneider, Escalate to De-escalate, US Naval Institute Proceedings, February 2017 (linked here):
"U.S. and Russian views concerning nuclear weapons differ fundamentally. ... Russia today continues to put a large share of its national resources into nuclear weapons programs ... Declassified Soviet and former Warsaw Pact documents indicate that the Soviets planned to use nuclear weapons first in a general war against the West. Today, Russian military doctrine reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in a conventional war. ... Russian nuclear doctrine did “not rule out a nuclear strike targeting a potential aggressor, including a preemptive strike, in situations critical to national security.” ... In December 2009, then-Commander of the Strategic Missile Troops Lieutenant General Andrey Shvaychenko declared, “In a conventional war, [nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)] ensure that the opponent is forced to cease hostilities, on advantageous conditions for Russia, by means of single or multiple preventive strikes against the aggressors’ most important facilities. In a nuclear war, they ensure the destruction of facilities of the opponent’s military and economic potential by means of an initial massive nuclear missile strike and subsequent multiple and single nuclear missile strikes.” General Shvaychenko’s statement is what Russia calls “de-escalation of a conflict.” ... According to Vice Admiral Robert Monroe, U.S. Navy (Retired) and former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, “Russia has followed exactly the opposite course from the United States. It has focused on low-yield weapons research, design, testing, and production.” ...
"Deterring precision low-yield nuclear strikes is critical because small nuclear attacks could escalate into a large-scale war. The United States must make an in-kind retaliatory response more credible and do so at minimum cost. There are options for this. The United Kingdom has a sub-strategic Trident SLBM capability in which missiles intended for this role have just a single warhead, probably with a lower yield. The U.S. Navy could acquire a similar capability at minimal cost as part of the warhead life extension programs now under way, giving the nation a survivable low-yield deterrent. A guidance package similar to that proposed for conventional Trident could give such warheads precision strike capability at an affordable cost. ... In October 2016, President Putin declared that “brandishing nuclear weapons is the last thing to do.” Good advice, but he does not take it. ... Until President Putin starts taking his own advice, the United States and NATO need to maximize their nuclear deterrent capability as inexpensively as possible, sending a message that Russia will never gain an advantage by trying to “escalate to de-escalate.” ... Russia constantly is entertaining new concepts of nuclear war and nuclear weapons that should be a major concern for the West."
4. EM-1 version based on nuclear test data revised in 1960: TM23-200 Capabilities of Atomic Weapons BRIEF EXTRACT (linked here): emphasises military battlefield data on the use of nuclear weapons to stop or deter invasions and conventional warfare, i.e. the USE of nuclear weapons to end all war forever. (Subsequent versions are still in part classified secret and run to thousands of pages, employing computer models rather than emphasising the direct presentation of data actually measured in the 1950s nuclear tests.) See also the corresponding UK classified tactical nuclear weapons UK and USA testing capabilities and effects analysis manual, Damage by Nuclear Weapons, extracts linked here and PDF download is linked here:
UK Damage by Nuclear Weapons 1960 detailed government analysis of all relevant USA and UK 1940s and 1950s atomspheric nuclear test data for military tactical capabilities (PDF download link HERE, originally SECRET, revised 1960), a few relevant diagrams from which are appended:
See also the summary of shielding data given in the UK Government 1963 Nuclear Handbook EXTRACT summarizing protection factors possible from nuclear explosions including UK WWII-style above ground civil defense blast shelters (PDF download link HERE, originally classified RESTRICTED)
A compilation of key extracts from Secret Russian tactical nuclear war manuals (PDF download link HERE); these documents are based on Russian atmospheric nuclear test data and were released to author by Ukraine after illegal invasions of Ukraine by Russia accompanied by nuclear threats, 2014-2022, and there is also the "brief" (169 pages) Russian summary report (T. F. Myasnikova, technical editor): "КРАТКИЙ СПРАВОЧНИК ПО БОЕВЫМ СВОЙСТВАН ЯДЕРНОГО ОРУЖИЯ" ("A Brief Guide to the Combat Properties of Nuclear Weapons"), extract of key data with English translations linked here (in a detailed data comparison with USA tactical nuclear weapons data):
Tactical Effects Data on Nuclear Weapons American and Russian manuals comparison (PDF dowload linked here; or you can view the information online here.)
5. Mark Episkopos, Russia’s Tactical Nuclear Weapon Stockpile Is Jaw-Droppingly Large, The National Interest, December 2, 2021 (linked here):
"The Kremlin, with its relatively limited resources, is unlikely to win in a prolonged, conventional, continental war with NATO. Thus, Russian military doctrine sees tactical nuclear warheads as a hedge against NATO. ... Putin added that “It is important to keep the required pace of producing advanced strike systems for the purposes of their employment and testing in the course of intensive combat training.” ... Here is the extent of Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal, and how Moscow plans to use it in the event of a major armed conflict with the west. ... At around 3,000 to 6,000 units, the Russian Federation possesses the largest tactical nuclear weapons stockpile in the world. These include not only warheads inherited from the Soviet Union but new and potent weapons systems developed in recent years. ... Russian military doctrine sees tactical nuclear warheads as a hedge against NATO–not only a deterrent but one of Russia’s only means of leveling the playing field in the mutually undesired event of an all-out war. As costly as these stockpiles are to store and maintain, it would be exponentially more expensive– and ultimately futile, given the financial disparities between the two sides– for Russia to try to match NATO’s conventional strength. Tactical nuclear warheads are, and will likely continue to be, a cost-efficient way for Moscow to offset its disadvantage in this domain."
6. Professor Freeman Dyson, "The future development of nuclear weapons", Foreign Affairs, April 1960, v38, pp457–464 (LINKED HERE): "There is a clear and acute military need for an explosive which would fill the gap between a ton and a kiloton of TNT ... [if America banned development of such relatively clean neutron bombs, allowing Russian superiority, as is now the case in 2026...] The adversary's bombs would outnumber ours ten or a hundred to one and theirs could be used with far greater versatility in infantry warfare. Suppose that in this situation a local war of the Korean type should begin. God help the American infantryman who is sent in to fight against these odds. Practically speaking, our Army would have had two alternatives: either to retreat precipitously or to strike back with our much more limited number of heavier nuclear weapons and destroy the whole country. This is not a pleasant situation to contemplate, and yet it is necessary that our people understand that it is a possibility. Any country which renounces for itself the development of nuclear weapons, without certain knowledge that its adversaries have done the same, is likely to find itself in the position of the Polish Army in 1939, fighting tanks with horses. [Machine guns fired from tanks stopped the Polish horses on September 1, 1939, during the Battle of Krojanty. The "joke" of NATO's conventional arms versus tactical-nuclear armed Russia is analogous to such a situation, thus it is extremely clear why certain war-mongering pseudo "disarmament" folk call for a conventional NATO and a continuation of the ban on Western tactical neutron weapons which supports our enemies and causes stalemate wars to sap us.]"
7. Democratic Party Senator Thomas J. Dodd, US Congressional Record, Senate, February 21, 1963, pages 2802-55 (LINKED HERE): "Our decisions to embark on the ill-starred test ban negotiations with the Soviets and our commitment to an unpoliced moratorium on testing were made in response to a condition of international hysteria on the test ban issue which Soviet propaganda had been assiduously fostering. There was agitation in this country for a cessation of testing, agitation abroad agitation in the U.N. And so we bowed: and made what was, in effect, an emo- tional decision which we have since been attempting to justify on scientific and political grounds. Another part of the explanation for our retreat from reality on the test ban issue is to be found in the fact that an aggressive faction in the scientific com- munity has succeeded in achieving a role of critical importance within the administration as top-level advisers on nuclear policy. That this is so is a matter of common knowledge. I have had a sufficient number of letters from scientists to persuade me that this faction does not have credentials to speak for the scientific community. But by dint of their vociferousness and their unrelenting self-assertion, they have succeeded in persuading officialdom, the press, and a large section of the public, that theirs is the voice of scientific conscience and wisdom.
"The persistently wrongheaded advice this scientific faction has fed to successive administrations stems from an appalling lack of understanding of political realities. It would be instructive to take the case history of one of the most prominent members of this scientific faction who has had very great infiuence on our policy. I refer to Dr. Hans Bethe, who once held the position of chief scientific adviser to President Eisenhower on the test ban issue. Dr. Bethe predicted that it would take many years for the Russians to get the A-bomb. He emphatically reiterated this prophecy, indeed, on the very day that the United States verified the first Soviet atomic explosion. As I have heard the story, he had no sooner finished expostulating on the inability of the Soviets to produce an A-bomb, when the phone rang bringing an urgent report that the Soviets had just exploded their first nuclear device.
"His attitude toward the development of the H-bomb was negative on two grounds. First, he held that it was impractical to undertake its development; and second, he held that the H-bomb would be immoral. When we got the H-bomb, Dr. Bethe, not discouraged by his previous failures as a prophet, predicted that it would be many years again before the Soviets could match our achievements. Actually, it was only a matter of months. He was one of the prime advocates of the nuclear testing moratorium defending the thesis that there was little to be gained from continued testing and little to be lost if the Soviets should test in secret. To Dr. Bethe it was inconceivable that the Russians would dishonor their word or engage in cheating. ... And when an analysis of the recent Soviet test series compelled Dr. Bethe, as chairman of the evaluation committee, to report that the Soviets had, in fact, scored sensational gains in their multimegaton capability, he rationalized his position by arguing that the technological advances scored by the Soviets really constituted a plus from our standpoint because the Soviets would no longer have to worry about American superiority, and therefore would be less tempted to embark on a surprise first strike against the United States. ... It is a sorry commentary on our thinking on nuclear matters that this man, who has been so consistently and so incredibly wrong in so many situations, was for years regarded with so much deference that much of his advice was translated into important national policy. ... up until 1958, the "bigger bang per buck" philosophy was instrumental in shaping our nuclear weapons development. ... a number of strategists and planners began to raise serious questions about our ability to fight a limited nuclear war. Included in this group was Gen. Maxwell Taylor, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was pointed out that we did not possess a rational doctrine for tactical nuclear warfare ...
"They began to explore the possibility of improved or radically different types of nuclear weapons, more suitable for tactical warfare. From this thinking arose the Army's Davy Crockett warhead, a lightweight and easily portable nuclear weapon of low explosive power, to be used primarily by frontline troops. Because of its relatively low yield [0.02 kt, +/- 10%], the Davy Crockett, although it is still a costly fission weapon, could be employed against enemy troops in a far more discriminate manner than the tactical weapons which had been stockpiled to date. The neutron bomb. In mid-1959, less than a year after the moratorium was initiated, there began to be reports about a radically different type of tactical nuclear weapon, which soon came to be known by the name of the neutron bomb. ... I believe that I was the first Member of the Congress to publicly discuss the possibilities of a neutron bomb. I did so as part of a detailed analysis of the entire nuclear test ban situation, which I presented on the floor of the Senate on May 12, 1960. I did so with a special purpose, because I considered all the hush-hush that surrounded the neutron bomb to be a glaring instance of the official abuse of secrecy. akin to the official hush-hush which surrounded the hydrogen bomb before the decision to make it.
"I described the neutron bomb as a kind of death ray that could kill or incapacitate with no significant fallout and only negligible physical damage in the target area. I said that such a bomb, technically, could be produced by tailoring the energy of a fusion explosion so that, instead of heat and blast, its primary product is a burst of neutrons. ... Human beings are extremely vulnerable to neutron radiation. ... Subsequent to my speech of May 12, 1960, there were numerous articles on the neutron bomb in the daily and the periodical press-in the Washington Star, the New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Life, Time, Saturday Evening Post, and so forth. ... Dr. [Freeman] Dyson described such a weapon as being logically the third major step in weapon development after the existing fission and hydrogen bombs. ... Dr. Dyson also discussed the Soviet interest in such weapons and he described experiments which indicated that the Soviets had embarked upon such a development more than a decade ago. He expressed his great concern should the United States have to cope with an adversary which possessed such weapons while we were restricted to the use of existing atomic weapons. ... Dr. Dyson's discussion of the neutron bomb was part of a strong plea for the United States to terminate the moratorium and renew nuclear testing. To him, as to many other responsible scientists, the dangers of an inadequately policed test ban treaty were too great to counterbalance the possible gains which might ensue. ... in contradistinction to those who chose to retreat from all nuclear warfare by advocating a conventional force buildup, he recommended that we face up to the harsh realities of the nuclear age by striving to maintain our nuclear superiority.
"Since Dr. Dyson's article appeared, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended that the development of the neutron bomb be pursued on a high priority basis, and the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy has been so impressed by the project that they have urged the President to support it. These facts have been reported in the press. ... the Soviet physicist L. S. Artsimovich ... who has played a significant role in the Soviet nuclear-weapons program, and has been highly decorated for his activities ... in his paper, described experiments, performed in 1952, in which very small amounts of heavy hydrogen-deuterium and tritium-were compressed by the detonation of a high-explosive assembly. In essence, this was an attempt to produce a very small yield hydrogen bomb, without using a fission trigger. The goal, as he stated it, was to develop a cheap nuclear explosive which would release energy at an acceptable cost. The Soviet experiments, it appears, were directed toward nuclear yields equivalent to 10 tons of TNT, as compared with yields of kilotons and megatons which are associated with our current nuclear weapons. ... Writing in Red Star, an official publication of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, in September 1961, Col. M. Pavlov set about to explain the neutron bomb to the Russian people. ... Pavlov then went on to make the calculation that a fusion bomb of very low yield, equivalent to 40 tons of TNT, can, by bursting at the proper altitude over a built-up area, kill the occupants, without producing significant physical damage to the structures in the area. ... They amount to an implied justification for the building of the neutron bomb by the Soviet Union.
"I find it worrisome in the extreme to know that they may now possess, or will soon possess, the very weapon which could assist them immeasurably toward realizing their goals, for this weapon would permit them to achieve the coveted prize of Western Europe with an intact urbanindustrial fabric, instead of battering it to rubble with atomic or hydrogen bombs, or even with high explosives, as was the case in World War II. As matters stand today, we know the Soviets have for a number of years been conducting work in the general area of the neutron bomb, and that they fully realize its military potentialities. The neutron bomb and NATO. Despite the manifest advantages which the neutron bomb would have over existing tactical nuclear weapons, and despite the evidence that the Soviets have long ago initiated research in this field, the development of the neutron bomb has been pooh-poohed or minimized or discouraged by some of the President's scientific advisers and by other members of the administration. Certain of the objections to the neutron bomb spring from the understandable desire to prevent the escalation of a limited military confrontation into allout thermonuclear warfare. ... Planners who urge that we confine ourselves to conventional weapons in any limited war situation have ... not secured the assurances of the Soviets that they will adhere to the same code of conduct ... In essence, the games we have played in these two areas are games of intellectual narcissism. They have been mirror exercises, in which we have attempted, for the moment successfully, to convince ourselves that the Soviets think and act and respond as we do ... But the image in the mirror was our own, not the Soviets ... I do not accept the thesis that the use of small tactical nuclear weapons like the neutron bomb in battlefield situations, will automatically lead to escalation into a total thermonuclear exchange. I consider this thesis exceedingly dangerous and demonstrably false. ...
"Let us consider a hypothesis ... Suddenly the Russians detonate a number of neutron bombs at critical heights above our concentrations of armor. In an instant, our units are rendered useless. The armored vehicles are still intact, but their crews have been immediately incapacitated, doomed to quick death by an intense flux of neutrons. If we do not ourselves possess the neutron bomb, what, then, would our reaction be? To continue to wage war with conventional weapons would be to invite a crushing military defeat. We might attempt to respond with the tactical nuclear weapons we now have in stock. But if we did, we would be at a double disadvantage. First of all, we would be in the ambiguous position of attempting to defend an ally with weapons that release large amounts of radioactivity, and whose unrestricted use would result in widespread death and destruction to the civilian populace. In the second place ... if we felt that our own tactical fission weapons were no match for the Soviet neutron bombs, would we automatically go over to all-out thermonuclear warfare? Would the President press the fateful button that would, within a fearfully short time, result in the incineration of scores of millions of Americans as well as scores of millions of Russians?"
8. Colonel P. A. L. Vaux, OBE, "Training for Nuclear War", RUSI Journal, November 1962, v107, pp322-6:
"A nation which is prepared in all respects for nuclear global war can clearly deal with a limited conflict, and provide what is needed for deterrent action in the cold war. ... It is plain, then, that it is the nuclear battlefield which we must study and for which we must train. ... Much work has been done at Corps and other study periods to determine the scale of nuclear effort which may be expected on the battlefield. The delivery of 150 atomic shells, bombs and missiles is not uncommonly envisaged on a front of 20 to 30 miles within six days. The enemy cannot be expected to deliver less. ... These battles, from the nature of the weapons, are most likely to be fought on tremendous fronts and in very great depth indeed. Before ever battle is joined, there will be very wide dispersion. In the first nuclear exchange, there will undoubtedly be severe damage to headquarters, and to communications systems. ... It is clear that the day will go to the side whose survivors are the quickest to recover and to fight on with confidence and knowledge of their task."
9. Marshall of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor, GCB, DSO, MC, "Nuclear deterrence after Nassau" (based on an address given to the NATO Defence College in January 1963), RUSI Journal, v108, n630, 1963, pp139-44 (the following quotation is taken from page 142):
"One of my most vivid and unhappy memories is that of the terrible months of 1939 and 1940 when, in a position of some responsibility, I watched the British Government, strongly supported by the French in the Supreme War Council, refusing to allow even the rudimentary little 500 lb High Explosive bombs of the day to be used against Germany, for fear of German retaliation. ... I remember Frenchmen in the summer of 1940 obstructing the runways of French airfields to prevent RAF bombers taking off to bomb Italy, for the same reason. It is partly those memories that make it absolutely impossible for me to believe that to embark on a single-handed nuclear war with a colossus like Russia would be politically practicable ... It is not that I do not think it would be nice for Britain to be able to deter Russia single-handed; it is just that I am completely convinced that there is not the remotest practical possibility of our ever being able to have a force that would be a credible deterrent on its own. ... as Lord Home said recently, that 'America bears the chief responsibility for the defence of the free world. This is simply because America is the only country with the strength in resources of wealth and manpower to match Russia."
10. The previous post (linked here) gives a detailed analysis of Herman Kahn's distinction between the deterrence of a direct knock-out blow and the deterrence of the actual kind of indirect provocations such as invasions of allies (Belgium in 1914, Poland in 1939) which triggered all of the real World Wars, and the implications for what kind of nuclear warheads are required for each type of deterrence, strategic and tactical, respectively. We will now give a brief analysis of the flawed analysis of Kahn's predecessor and RAND Corporation colleague, Dr Bernard Brodie (a former professor of international relations at Yale, before becoming a RAND Corporation senior staff member) in his 1959 book Strategy in the Missile Age. At 423 pages including index, Brodie's book is much shorter than Kahn's On Thermonuclear War (published the next year) and Brodie's thesis centres on ignoring the difficult deterrence of major provocations (the focus of Kahn), and claiming instead that the well-debunked air knock-out blow theory of Giulio Douhet is justified by megaton H-bombs:
"... Douhet possessed the largest and most original mind that has thus far addressed itself to the theory of air power. ... That philosophy [which originated in Jan Smuts' report to the British War Cabinet on August 17, 1917, calling for a new Air Ministry to address the "destruction of industrial and populous centres on a vast scale" to somehow produce capitulation, an idea credited to a discussion in May 1917 between the American Billy Mitchell and British Royal Flying Corps commander Hugh Trenchard] is fairly completely presented in his first book-length publication, The Command of the Air, published originally in 1921. ... He was much too busy pressing home those ideas upon a generally hostile audience to have the time or stimulus to ... refine his thoughts, and very likely he lacked the temperment. ... his insights remain impressive. ... time has rescued him from his first and gravest error - his gross overestimate of physical effects per ton of bomb dropped - by introducing the nuclear bomb ... [Emphasis added.]"
This quotation is from 71-73 of Brodie's Strategy in the Missile Age. It is deplorable for missing the key point: contrary to Brodie, it's not the physical effects of bombs on cities that Doucet overestimated so much as the psychological effect on the continuance of the war. Brodie's whole book is based on this fraud: he gives an excellent summary of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey report conclusions regarding bombing German oil, for example, but completely ignores their finding that the enemy morale was not affected even after huge firebombing raids comparable to nuclear strikes on civilian targets. People don't petition their leaders to surrender to the aggressor when they are being attacked in his way; evidence shows that they are offended by attacks and more resolved than ever to continue fighting to the last. Brodie's error is to ignore the facts of history where they don't fit his thesis. Brodie also attacks military tactics in preference to strategy. But wars must be won one battle at a time. Opening up multiple fronts simultaneously lost the Nazis their war, by strategically diluting - rather than tactically concentrating - their forces. The key principle in war is the concentration of force, and this is precisely what the tactical nuclear bomb provides: the ability to concentrate force on a particular point. Brodie rejects this fact because it doesn't fit his thesis.
If you bomb populations, you harden enemy civilian resolve to continue, rather than winning it. This is what WWII data showed, what the Korean War devastation showed, and what Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam showed. You can't bomb civilians into loving you or surrendering. No matter how many megatons you use - 9 megatons of air dropped conventional weapons were dropped in the Vietnam War (which is equivalent to war of hundreds of nuclear megatons when scaling individual bomb effect areas by W2/3, whereby larger explosions are far less efficient for area targets than the same energy is when spread out more uniformly over the area, as a large number of smaller yield bombs). Douhet himself claimed that 500 tons of poison gas would wipe out life in a large city. Contrary to Brodie's obfuscating sophistry, this was probably correct for WWII where Germany produced and stockpiled 12,000 tons of the lethal luquid nerve agent "tabun"; but Germany did not use a drop of it for fear of escalation (we had a deterrent against escalation for gas war, in the form of a stockpile of mustard gas bombs and anthrax cattlecake for biological warfare if needed, and we had gas proofed shelters and masks to reduce the impact of limited escalation "shows of force" using chemicals; Germany had a masks shortage due to lack of adequate rubber supply). Brodie simply ignores these hard straightforward, undisputed facts. On page 110, Brodie admits that 131 kilotons of conventional bombs (equivalent to megatons of less efficient area devastation by nuclear bombs by a straightforward damage area and thus casualty scaling comparison) were dropped each month on Germany in 1944, but still fails to see this as a debunking of his whole thesis that nuclear weapons are somehow different! They're not; you can get lingering contamination skin burns and poisoning from WWI mustard gas liquid just as you can from nuclear fallout!
Brodie finally on page 111 cites the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey analysis that showed that the key to ending WWII in Europe was the grossly belated decision to end prioritising strategic city destruction BS, and instead to recommend giving Top-Priority starting only on March 5, 1944, to the TACTICAL BOMBING OF OIL TARGETS. That recommendation was not immediately implemented, but was only issued as a directive on June 8, 1944 (two days after the D-Day invasion of Normandy in France). From the end of June 1944 until March 1945, there were 555 attacks on 135 oil industry targets, causing German oil production to fall from a wartime average of 662,000 tons/month to just 12% or 80,000 tons in March 1945! This is what downed the Luftwaffe and stopped the Panzers in their tracks. Without gasoline, you can't even delivery ammunition or food to soldiers! You can't fight without mobility. Tactical bombing won the war. Strategic bombing of people in cities failed. Brodie doesn't admit this! Even in primitive wars, stopping the food logistics defeats the enemy: as the previous post explains, Goldwater's desire to use nuclear weapons tactically to blow the cover of the Ho Ching Ming Trail in Vietnam would have literally prevented insurgency. You can't fight without food and ammunition. In Malay, Britain was able to put down communist insurgency by simply controlling food supplies efficiently to feed the non-combatants, not the terrorists (make them hungry for peace, and you get peace). It's not really that hard to understand:
"Even if the final military victories that carried the Allied armies across the Rhine and the Oder had not taken place ... the German armies, completely bereft of ammunition and of motive power, would almost certainly have had to cease fighting by June or July." - U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Effects on German War Economy, page 14.
So why didn't WWII end years earlier by concentrating on tactically bombing enemy oil production, to down enemy aircraft and to grind the Panzers to a halt, and also to end enemy logistics supply for munitions, food, and fuel? Answer: our bomber aircraft couldn't initially find or hit anything other than large sprawling cities and even with the radar made available in March 1942, UK Bomber Command was only able to drop 50% of its bombs within 5 miles and only 10% within 2 miles of target ground zero. This gross aiming error for bombing is a historical delivery system issue, no longer relevant for the more accurate technology available today. The only rationale (a fake one, at that) for countervalue city bombing in the past was inaccurate delivery systems! Before May 1944, only 1% of the 0.5 megaton of conventional bombs dropped on Germany was even aimed at oil production (less hit the target!). The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey's Area Studies Division Report on page 22 shows that during the earlier city bombing phase from January 1942 to July 1944, the overall production of German munitions actually increased by a factor of 3.22, rather than declining! (This involved crank schemes to try to target bombs on hardened machine tools producing steel ball-bearings; both machine tools and the ball bearings are virtually invulnerable to blast, even in the event that a bomb by chance happens to explode in the vicinity, rather than 2-5 miles off target. Proponents ranted about the vital nature of steel ball bearings for the enemy war effort, while apparently totally oblivious to their hardness!) At some point, the fact that strategic bombing of cities is a military failure and tactical bombing of enemy logistics (gasoline) wins wars, needs to be widely appreciated. We need a credible deterrent, and that necessitates the honesty to recognise that we will lose if we do what enemy fronts encourage us to do, a wasteful statemate war of collateral damage that leads to nothing but our bankrupcy and defeat.
Schlieffen's German WWI plan to conquer France called originally for 3-to-1 overwhelming superiority concentrated on an entrapped, enveloped enemy, not the dispersed wide "front" as soon developed due to the technology of (1) machine guns and (2) dispersed trenches to avoid machine gun fire. In 1915, French General Joffre discounted the principle of concentration of force to win battles, preferring a simple headlong attack eastward for the entire French army, producing 1.3 million French casualties versus only 0.506 million German casualties in his offensives of 1915. Political groupthink "common sense" stupidity led to many of these disasters in wars. Likewise, Truman's administration dismissed Major General Orvil Anderson (then Commandant of the Air War College) for publically calling for a first strike, preventative war policy on the basis of military (not political propaganda!) necessity to defeat communism. But when Admiral Robert B. Carney (Chief of Naval Operations) made a similar analysis in public in May 1954, Eisenhower did not fire him. Western "preventative war" is still subject to hate attacks by enemy stooges, but it is in fact the standard riposte to terrorism; after 9/11 we launched preventative wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brodie states on pages 231, 237-240:
"The side that hits first stands a good chance, assuming reasonably shrewd planning and preparation, either of destroying the opponent's retalitatory capability or of disorganizing and reducing it to such a degree that the remnants could be easily handled ... Thus the side initiating attack may be able to keep down the amount of damage it receives to a tolerable minimum [with ABM and civil defense help, shelters etc to ward off the worst effects of protected second strike Polaris/Trident SLBMs with their relative low yield MIRV small warheads] while heaping militarily critical destruction on the enemy. Such an outcome spells total victory for the initial attacker. ... when we visualize a U.S.-initiated preventative war, we are considering the action of a democract in which both communications and dissenting opinions are still free. Only by adopting a rigid dictatorship within could American leaders shut out reports from abroad of the unimaginable horror of their own creation [however in the kind of crisis where a first strike is needed, overseas propaganda will be enemy propaganda and will be censored, if only by being labelled "enemy misinformation"; this occurred in the aftermath of 9/11 when a strong UK-USA coalition of leaders confounded the anti-war movement; you don't have to ban lying propaganda, you're better off discrediting it as enemy-backing misinformation]. ...
"A decision for 'timely action' (as one euphemism has it) would require an extraordinary, indeed almost boundless, degree of conviction and resolution on the part of the President [that's his job!]. We cannot doubt that he has the power to decide and to execute such a policy. It was presidential action which committed us to the American Civil War ... Certainly no initiative or pressure from the general public is necessary. ... the [1914 and 1939] aversion to war ultimately collapsed, but not without provocation of an extreme kind [this always occurs when you appease aggressors, they see it as an invitation to overstep the mark]. ... In short, war is generally unpopular, and the public mood inclines to support really bold action only in response to great anger or great fright. ... as we have already noted, the operational powers of the President are such that the attitudes of the public, and of the Congress too, can be disregarded for long enough to accomplish a committment to war. ... military chiefs are not likely to be insubordinate, especially when the decision is for bold action. It is the President's conviction, will, and decision ..."
The fundamental new problem is that conventional bombing of Russia, on a militarily significant scale, e.g. trying to conventionally shut down Russian oil supplies to do in their military the way we finally did in 1944-5 to do in the Nazis, will produce such collateral damage as to reduce their perception of the nuclear threshold. In other words, if we manage - by proxy war drone and missile conventional attacks - to defeat Russian conventional war capabilities the way we did the Nazis in 1944-5, we get into the problem that they may be tempted to escalate to at least the use of tactical nuclear weapons, rather than surrender. Saying this is a "taboo" or a "heresy" or "insanity" solves nothing. It was insane for them to invade Ukraine, it was insane of them to start the first Cold War. When you're fighting a lunatic, you need to think like one or you'll be outwitted. On page 355, Brodie refers to his RAND Corp colleague Nathan Leite's works Operational Code of the Politburo (1950) and Study of Bolshevism (1953) as evidence that Russians are ideologically motivated to launch a disarming first-strike to ensure peace, when they can.
Brodie does make the useful point in a footnote on page 319 of Strategy in the Missile Age that tactical nuclear weapons were discounted for use against bridges because the target of the Hiroshima bomb, Aioi Bridge just 82 metres from ground zero survived the explosion as shown in Glasstone's book, while in reality it was not 82 metres from the point of the explosion but 600 metres away, because the bomb was an air burst at an altitude that did not produce sufficient blast at ground zero to blow strong bridges down (or, for that matter, most of the concrete buildings in Hiroshima). Thus "local commanders kept reporting the opinion that the Korean conflict presented no suitable targets for nuclear weapons" because they were misinformed by Glasstone's photos of Hiroshima, and didn't properly understand the full range of tactical nuclear weapons capabilities against various targets. But in late 1957, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wrote in "Challenge and Response in United States Policy" (Foreign Affairs, xxxiv, October 1957, p31):
"Recent tests point to the possibility of possessing nuclear weapons the destructiveness and radiation effects of which can be confined substantially to predetermined targets. In the future it may thus be feasible to place less reliance upon deterrence of vast retaliatory power. It may be possible to defend countries by nuclear weapons so mobile, or so placed, as to make military invasion with conventional forces a hazardous attempt. For example, terrain is often such that invasion routes can be decisively dominated by nuclear artillery."
In the same year (1957), the British White Paper on Defence similarly stated in paragraph 20: "The possession of nuclear air power is not by itself a complete deterrent. The frontiers of the free world, particularly in Europe, must be firmly defended on the ground. For only in this way can it be made clear that aggression will be resisted."
Brodie himself comments on the last page (page 409) of Strategy in the Missile Age that fighting stalemate "limited" wars are a waste of our precious resources (this was proved in Vietnam but is, however, not applicable for an all-out Star Wars arms race, which bankrupts dictatorships, as Reagan proved in the 1980s): "There is little chance that the basic inherent strength of either the Soviet Union or Communist China can be drained off through wars that are kept limited in any meaningful sense of the term."
However, limited nuclear war has not been fully trialled and proved one way or the other, apart from the contentious use of two nuclear weapons against Japan in August 1945. Brodie is generally deceptive in his treatment of the tactical nuclear threat induced termination of the Korean War, claiming on page 318 that we should have kept up pressure when Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations Jakob Malik turned on the charm offensive in the United Nations to switch from military attack to peace negotiation, when "the Communist Chinese army facing us had been in a truly desperate condition, undergoing large-scale defections ... the pressure was never fully reapplied. We paid bitterly for that error ...". Brodie makes no mention of the (then classified) fact Truman had been duped into helping Russia and China by British Prime Minister's fake "secret agreement" with him to not use tactical nuclear weapons in Korea, an agreement immediately leaked to Russia by the Foreign Office's "Cambridge Spy Ring"!
Like Monty's omission from his 1958 Memoirs of the then-still-secret UK's Colossus digital computer decoding of encrypted German military communications which vitally took away General Rommel's "factor of surprise", Brodie's omission of official secrets on Korea makes his thesis biased and highly misleading. If Attlee's secret fake "peace" program (against nuclear deterrence of North Korea) hadn't existed, the nuclear deterrent would have been a factor in Korea! It wasn't a factor in Korea until Truman was replaced by Eisehhower, and Attlee by Churchill. Then the nuclear deterrent ended the war! This remains the key rationale evidence for the claim that we can TOTALLY end war by credible tactical nuclear weapons deterrence! In 1953, the last year of the Korean War, the U.S. Defense Budget reached $53 billion. By 1957, nuclear deterrence had reduced it to $38 billion, before the shock of Sputnik and the first successful ICBM (Russian) test. Brodie's conclusions (pages 393 and 397 of Strategy in the Missile Age):
"The fact is that deterrence can fail. ... Provision must be made for the saving of life on a vast scale. There is room for earnest debate on how big a program is necessary and on what kinds of shelters are worth their cost [preferably the Russian-style "dual-use" shelters, that are used as underground car parks, warehousing, etc in peacetime, especially as, being underground they're well insulated and thus are energy efficient, remaining cool without air conditioning in heatwaves, and remaining mild in winter], but little room for the assumption that no shelters are needed. At minimum there is need for a considerable program of fallout shelters outside cities. The present neglect of a shelter program of any dimensions bears no perceptible relation to the military risks we seem daily willing to take. ... Deterrence after all depends on a subjective feeling which we are trying to create in the opponent's mind, a feeling compounded of respect and fear ..."
Too much "respect", for instance the 1938 handshakes and appeasement effort, simply invites aggression to trigger WWIII by persuading them you're weak and stupid; too much "fear" and you invite a paranoid first-strike to trigger WWIII; deterrence is not just having bombs, but preparing publically to use them so they are a CREDIBLE DETERRENT, not a bluff.
K. Zilliacus states on page 193 of his 1939 Penguin Special S26 book, Between Two Wars? The Lessons of the Last World War in Relation to the Preparations for the Next: "[UK Prime Minister] Mr Chamberlain has repeatedly declared that there will be no victors in the next war [he was speaking of WWII, not WWIII, but of an imaginary, fake-news WWII involving total extermination by gas bombs, just as present day loons see the future of WWIII as multimegaton bursts on civilians]. [Prime Minister prior to Chamberlain] Lord (then Mr) Baldwin stated at Bewley on April 20, 1936: 'I have often uttered the truism that the next war will be the end of civilization in Europe ... the raging peoples of every country, torn with passion, suffering and horror, would wipe out every Government in Europe and you would have a state of anarchy from end to end of it as man's protest against wickedness in high places'."
It was because of their religious like belief in such drivelling fear-mongering tripe that these two British Prime Ministers, and their backers in the mass media and general public, were able to ignore Hitler's obsession with Lebensraum as written down in 1925 and published in Mein Kampf: "Never forget that the most sacred right in the world is the right to have land to cultivate for oneself, and the most sacred sacrifice is the blood shed for this land ... State frontiers are made by men and changed by men. The mere fact that the excessive acquisition of territory by a nation is successful creates no particular duty of permanent recognition of the fact. It demonstrates at most the strength of the conquerors and the weakness of the sufferers. And it is in this strength alone that right resides." You can whine all day long that this is immoral, but it doesn't change the facts one iota. Power is power.