For You Military Minded People/Rocket Jockeys

Bullzeye

Could someone please explain to me the difference between "strategic", "tactical", and "deterrant"?I'm referring to how three different models of the same ICBM can have three different purposes.

jeenyes

Not sure if this is what your asking, but "strategic" is a weapon used in taking out cities, military bases in a nuclear war type scenario. Might be a 10, 20 megatom warhead."tactical" is used for taking out certain objects or places, such as a afgan cave or training base. Might be a 1 megaton warhead."deterrant" is missles used, as the name implies, to deter someone from doing something. Might be any size warhead.[This message has been edited by jeenyes (edited 03-21-2002).]

Bullzeye

Yeah, that makes sense I guess.I could probably stomach the idea of nuclear war if you could remove the "strategic" aspect.Military bases and whatnot are fair-game, but to use such an utterly annihilating weapon on densely packed civilians is just about the most hideous thing any of us can think of.But then you've got to think about fallout and the environmental impact, so I guess the citizens would suffer one way or the other.Here's something for you to chew on: The Little Boy fission A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima was no larger than a normal 500-lb. bomb. It had a yield of 15-kilotons, and killed 150,000 people with the explosion and radiation.The biggest nuclear device ever owned by the US is the Mark-53 free-fall H-bomb. It's about the size of a tractor-trailer and weighs close to 10 tons. It has a yield of 9-megatons, thats 9,000-kilotons.That's 800 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.That kind of power.....simply unbelievable.The US still has "up to 50" of these bombs in it's permanent stockpile, they claim for the purpose of destroying "the hardest of the hard protected underground targets".Uh huh.[This message has been edited by Bullzeye (edited 03-22-2002).]

offeror

I agree with the definitions. The interesting thing is that Bush has apparently fast-laned the development of even smaller tactical nukes for surgical use in penetrating deep bunkers and other smaller specialized terrorist applications. I have no problem with this at all, given that we now know we may have to stamp out enemies using primitive suitcase nukes, dirty radiation bombs, serin-type gas and so-called "Level 4" bacteria or viruses. It's ironic that we never needed this stuff for the Soviets but it may become necessary to retaliate against weapons of mass destruction from small bands of cavemen. Let's just be sure we have the necessary capability to win. That's my bottom line.

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beachmaster73

Whoa whoa......guys hold on. We don't have any "tactical" nukes in the mega ton range. Our tactical nukes run between 5-200 kilo tons....big difference. Most of our tacticals are "dial a yields" where the yield can be adjusted between 5-30 KT's. Our Strategic weapons are substancially smaller than the Russian war heads. We made up for our smaller war heads with significantly better guidance systems. The accuracy of our systems has enabled us to make our strategic weapons in the 1-10 Mega ton range with most at about 1-3 MT's. The Russians on the other hand made up for their significantly more inaccurate weapons by increasing the yield with larger weapons....remember we captured the German guidance experts at the end of World War Two the Russians captured the German propulsion experts. We have postulated that the Russians may have had some 30, 40, and 50 megaton weapons.While all nukes come under the control of the President, tactical nukes on his order can be used by battle field commanders to change the course of a battle. Strategic weapons can only be released by the President. Beach

Bullzeye

50 megatons!That's almost un-freaking believable....I want to see some figures on how big the hypocenter of one of those bastards would be....But I agree with you on the guidance aspect, Beach.The most advanced cruise missile the Soviets ever had during the Cold War was the AS-3 Kangaroo. Thing weighed about 125,000 lbs. Seriously. A Tupelov Bear bomber could carry one of them.It was so heavy from the primitive engine it used and the huge onboard computer that had three pre-programmed commands: Faster, Slower, and Dive. They had to shoot it in the precise angle that they needed it to travel on, because it wasnt going anywhere but down once it started off.All that for a yield of 800-kilotons.The Skybolt cruise missile was pretty interesting. Accurate, long-range, pretty big warhead too. But it lost the funding contract to the Polaris SLBM from Boeing. Too baaaad.

travelor

there was an artical from reuter (I think) today about that stream-lining process, that caught my attention just a little...see, development of smaller warheads requires testing, against the treaty agreements. if we break the treaty then other smaller countries will follow suit. NOT GOOD...that is one of the biggest deterents for some of those countries that we DO NOT want to see develope nuclear weapons. When does fallout become acceptable? Don't we have some very well advanced technology that would work pretty good to destroy taliban types?

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keep lots of extra uppers for your ar..you can change often enough to keep the thing from over heating...what ever caliber fits the moment..~Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets~

alledan

You could say all our nukes are "deterant" simply because the only time they will be used is in second strike initiative".

ndbilly

You guys make me want to watch "Fail Safe" again. Forty years old and many aspects of the core story remain as they were then.