The tactical ones are a grey area. They can be small enough not to end the world. They can also have far less long term effects than the larger and older ones. In short, you could nuke a military base as apposed to a city. They can be delivered as an artilery shell.
So if Russia used one. I doubt the world would immediately luanch thier strategic arsenal in response.
It’s dubious that they have useful nukes available to just drop in an shell to start with. For practical purposes their nukes are fairly large and there are other considerations. Poorly maintained shit may malfunction creating additional doubt as to their military might and it might trigger additional aid by the rest of the world. They can’t actually fight NATO so actions have to be carefully calibrated so as not to bring the rest of the world or even just more of their aid into the fray lest it become even more expensive or even impossible to win.
I will say I don’t know what Russia specifically has in thier arsenal beyond the general “tactical nukes”. But artillery shell or missle… it makes little difference. Tactical nukes are relatively new, so aren’t much of an age concern as the bigger older stuff. Functionality concerns, only they really know.
And I agree, which is why I said they are holding back. But if the situation changes, they may not need to hold back.
Like new if you time traveled from the 50s We literally conceived of a bazooka launched personal nuke. Generally speaking not much was actually made by anyone and is unlikely to have been maintained as they would have been deemed basically useless for decades as is very expensive to maintain.
Well TIL. I though they couldn’t make them that small back then. But anyway, the russians were producing the latest version of small tactical nukes in the 20 teens. Those are pretty new.
The logic behind not using them is either they can’t or they can’t. They didn’t kill a million russians and junk a fair chunk of their existing hardware for nothing. The reasonable perception is that they couldn’t take Ukraine and fight NATO at all whereas without NATO assistance historical or current Ukraine would have actually fallen in 3 days. Their ability to take Ukraine is therefore 100% a function of how well they can keep NATO out of it and nuking Ukraine blows that objective.
Not using nukes isn’t holding back its not inviting armageddon.
The tactical ones are a grey area. They can be small enough not to end the world. They can also have far less long term effects than the larger and older ones. In short, you could nuke a military base as apposed to a city. They can be delivered as an artilery shell. So if Russia used one. I doubt the world would immediately luanch thier strategic arsenal in response.
It’s dubious that they have useful nukes available to just drop in an shell to start with. For practical purposes their nukes are fairly large and there are other considerations. Poorly maintained shit may malfunction creating additional doubt as to their military might and it might trigger additional aid by the rest of the world. They can’t actually fight NATO so actions have to be carefully calibrated so as not to bring the rest of the world or even just more of their aid into the fray lest it become even more expensive or even impossible to win.
I will say I don’t know what Russia specifically has in thier arsenal beyond the general “tactical nukes”. But artillery shell or missle… it makes little difference. Tactical nukes are relatively new, so aren’t much of an age concern as the bigger older stuff. Functionality concerns, only they really know. And I agree, which is why I said they are holding back. But if the situation changes, they may not need to hold back.
Like new if you time traveled from the 50s We literally conceived of a bazooka launched personal nuke. Generally speaking not much was actually made by anyone and is unlikely to have been maintained as they would have been deemed basically useless for decades as is very expensive to maintain.
Well TIL. I though they couldn’t make them that small back then. But anyway, the russians were producing the latest version of small tactical nukes in the 20 teens. Those are pretty new.
The logic behind not using them is either they can’t or they can’t. They didn’t kill a million russians and junk a fair chunk of their existing hardware for nothing. The reasonable perception is that they couldn’t take Ukraine and fight NATO at all whereas without NATO assistance historical or current Ukraine would have actually fallen in 3 days. Their ability to take Ukraine is therefore 100% a function of how well they can keep NATO out of it and nuking Ukraine blows that objective.