​Nuclear War: Still A Possibility?

Meanwhile the US is implementing mobile, trailer-mounted MK 41 launchers in Europe. The mobile system is called Typhon, and is an emerging deep strike system (not air defense). The NATO center for Typhon is in Germany.

The US says that the Tomahawk is a conventionally armed cruise missile. The mobile, ground-launched nuclear Tomahawk variant – the BGM-109G Gryphon – was retired and fully destroyed much earlier, by 1991, to comply with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces [INF] Treaty. The US withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019.

The naval version (TLAM-N) warheads were destroyed between 2010 and 2013. Both used variants of the W-80 nuclear warhead. An updated version of the W-80 warhead is designated for the Air Force's upcoming AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile (which is air launched). It is planned to have a“dial a yield” weapon ranging from 5 to 150 kilotons.

The Russians believe that the US is significantly increasing its tactical nuclear posture in Europe and likely do not regard the“retirements” of nuclear armed Tomahawks as reflecting their own intelligence assessments on the availability of nuclear warheads for Tomahawks.

The Pentagon generally divides US nuclear weapons (and their delivery systems) into two broad categories, namely strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

Strategic weapons are primarily delivered by long range ballistic missiles, either land based or by ballistic missile submarines (”boomers”). Their purpose is to destroy an adversary's ICBMs (and other ballistic missile and bomber assets) and to obliterate operations centers in key locations including cities such as Moscow or Beijing.

The US Minuteman III, located in underground silos, has nuclear warheads (W-78 or W-87) with a yield between 335 and 350 kt. (Compare this with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs with much smaller blast yields. Hiroshima's uranium bomb, called Little Boy, is estimated around 13 kt, Nagasaki's Fat Man plutonium bomb 21 kt or less.)

The US Atomic bombing of Japan was a city-busting exercise. The US Minuteman system is primarily aimed at destroying underground silos by creating massive overpressure over top of the buried silos, destroying the underground missiles.

The strategic competition between the US and USSR was over whether either side was trying for a first strike capability, meaning the ability to neutralize the enemy's nuclear strike capability. The US always contended it was not aiming for a first strike system, and often accused the Russians of trying to do so.

Tactical nuclear weapons were originally thought of as a way for smaller NATO forces to stop a Soviet attack in Europe based on the image of tens of thousands of Warsaw Pact forces – including tanks, armored fighting vehicles and troop transports and massive artillery – flowing through the Fulda Gap into Germany and the heart of NATO.

Tactical nuclear weapons, including land systems like the Honest John and the Lance missile, and nuclear gravity bombs delivered by NATO aircraft, were supposed to block a Warsaw Pact mass attack.

The value of tactical nuclear weapons was greatly diminished by the buildup, on the Soviet side, of short and intermediate range ballistic missile systems that could knock out almost all of NATO's military assets and destroy major cities.

Perhaps the most worrisome development in the 1980s was Russia's SS-20 mobile intermediate range ballistic missile that threatened Europe. It carried a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. Europe had no air defenses to deal with the SS-20, and still lacks integrated air defenses almost half a century later.

The SS-20 was scrapped (along with the Pershing II) under the INF treaty. But modern cruise missiles like the Islander, used heavily in Ukraine, have replaced it. Iskander can be equipped with nuclear warheads with yields in the range of 50 kt.

At its peak the US had a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, mostly tactical. In 1967, the United States nuclear weapons stockpile reached a total of 31,255 warheads. The US weapons included nuclear artillery shells (like the 155mm and 8-inch projectiles), short-range ballistic missiles (such as Honest John, Sergeant, and Corporal), anti-submarine rockets, nuclear depth charges, surface-to-air missile warheads (like Nike Hercules), atomic demolition munitions (ADMs), and thousands of tactical gravity bombs deployed with dual-capable aircraft in Europe and Asia.

Today the US has deployed some 100 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe (including Turkey). These weapons can be launched by designated US fighter aircraft and from aircraft belonging to some NATO partners.