When the Russian Air Force began overflying US Navy ships in forward AORs, I didn’t take much notice. Our forces are closer to their homeland than they are to ourselves, and even if they don’t intend the slightest threat to Russia, it’s natural for a country to take an interest in a powerful military force approaching its own area of interest.
This, however, is another matter entirely:
The role of tactical nuclear weapons in the Russian navy may grow, a news agency quoted a senior Russian admiral as saying Monday.
Vice Adm. Oleg Burtsev told the state-run RIA-Novosti that the increasing range and precision of tactical nuclear weapons makes them an important asset.
“Probably, tactical nuclear weapons will play a key role in the future,” said Burtsev, the navy’s deputy chief of staff.
He added that the navy may fit new, less powerful nuclear warheads to the existing types of cruise missiles.
“There is no longer any need to equip missiles with powerful nuclear warheads,” Burtsev said. “We can install low-yield warheads on existing cruise missiles.”
Nuclear weaponry always held a strong attraction to the old Soviet Union. Compared to building out a modern military force capable of global reach, nukes were a cheap way to join the “great power” club. Of course, action always inspires reaction, and the buildup of vast strategic arsenals designed to ensure that at least a portion of retaliatory capability in the event of a decapitating strike quickly became a end in itself. This expensive buildup of unthinkable destructive power led to a strategy with a perhaps intentionally ironic acronym: MAD – mutually assured destruction.
But if the notion of actually using those strategic nuclear weapons was understood to be madness, the strange idea that tactical nukes were somehow different has always been suspect. Designed to quickly overcome a local asymmetry of military power – again, on the cheap – the risk was always that a purely conventional fight could spin out of control to a local nuclear exchange at the tactical level which might in turn result in global destruction.
It was the Soviet deployment of tactical nukes in its forward bastions in Eastern Europe that to Ronald Reagan’s expensive, but ultimately successful defense build up – a policy that the Soviets crippled their economy trying to match. In the end, recognizing that they could not Findlandize Western Europe, they met us at the negotiating table for mutually beneficial reductions in nuclear weaponry.
This off-hand nostalgia for the “good old days” of superpower competition on the cheap has the potential to take us back to bad old days when we taught our kids to go into the hallways and tuck their heads between their knees, when the radios routinely buzzed with tests of the emergency broadcast system, when alert sirens were checked weekly, when fallout shelter signs were fresh and new, when everyone lived with the constant knowledge that a trifling mistake might end humanity’s experiment. When we had to wonder if the “Russians love their children too.”
We’ve been down that road before. It’s long, winding and expensive, but worst of all is the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere.
Like all discussions of nuclear warfare, this too involves a good deal of metaphysics, rather moreso than actual application of military thought.
The Russians imply they will arm their ASuW missiles with low-yield warheads. The thinking is that they can hold at risk our naval forces, because they can threaten to destroy a task force on the high seas, with little collateral damage to our civilian population. If there is little damage to the civilian population, there is concurrently less risk of our upping the ante and utilizing a counterstrike. The risk is there, but do we go for a counterstrike that would result in our own nation being struck? That’s pretty much cutting off the nose to spite the face.
The idea here is that the Russians don’t intend to use the nukes, but rather raise the stakes to a point where we forgo taking some actions in the future to avoid the risk of starting an exchange of any sort. That gives the Russians greater room to maneuver, either in the military or political sphere.
It is to my mind, the same thinking behind the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons. I don’t think they will fire off the very first one they have. But if you think they are obnoxious now, wait until they have a nuclear umbrella to hide under.
I strongly doubt the Russians are willing to even harass us with these nukes. They like selling oil to us far, far too much.
I do think they might want to sell or leak them to people who don’t like us too much though.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R40154.pdf
A very good primer on detection of SNM. Guess we’ll have to start hanging pods on aircraft again. Think about the gamma ray detectors going whonk whonk whonk after this latest flyover- we’d be a_holes and elbows. Guess it is cheaper to threaten us with nucs than to build your own carrier and get competent at operating aircraft at sea. I’m sure they are enjoying a good laugh at our expense, so why not announce that we too view tactical nukes as having a “key role” in the future so we have just put ‘em on all our stealth cruise missiles and SM-3s.
Of course, that is not in the spirit of “change”. Forgive me.
I recall that some sort of agreement was made between the US and Soviets in which all cruise missiles were de-nuked.
This is just another one of those little “challenges” that Biden spoke of, and to which President Chuckles will not respond. Down the slippery slope we go in the little handbasket.
Edward, the agreement was on intermediate range landbased nuclear weapons. It had no impact on the seabased platforms.
The US decision to remove TLAM-N weapons from the fleet (and other tac nukes) was unilateral.
To be historically correct, WE were the first to install Tac Nukes in Europe in order to counter the numerical advantage
that the WU & WP had in conventional forces. Coupled with our publicly stated policy of not eschewing “first use” of nukes thru “selective release,” this strategy scared the hell out of the Soviets, who feared a rapidly escalating general nuclear war if Tac nukes were employed and thus served as a brake on their aggressive posturing/threatening/intimidation
in Europe.
It appears that the Russians are borrowing a page out of our own playbook using very much the basic logic XBradTC has outlined. And as XBrad has pointed out, this tactic works even better on the high seas because unlike Europe, they’re aren’t any civilians around–nothing but American Navy “volunteers”–which works even better than before because if a nuclear exchange costing thousands of American sailor’s lives occurs, those counceling restraint, etc., will be the first to point out that these personnel had willingly risked putting themselves in potential harms way–unlike a “forced,” draftee force. And thus, in effect, these sailors will be said to more or less have no bitch (although this will be oh so delicately implied by “responsible” critics and shouted to the rooftops by the DU/Daily Kos crowd only too glad to see “warmongers” die) so retaliation, it will be argued by the left, needlessly risks a wider war–as XBrad points out.
The Russians ain’t stupid. This strategy/tactic will work–and for the EXACT same psychological reasons it worked for us in Europe.
Man that bear bomber shown in the picture in the linked article looks like crap….
Hope their nukes are maintained a little better.
Yeah, they don’t have any dessicated bone-yard in Ariz.to mothball ‘em in during the lean years. The wx in Russia is none too kind–not to mention the state of Russian maintenance techniques. The joke used to be that if the engine couldn’t be fixed by hitting on it with a hammer, the Russians wouldn’t build it–such was the state of sophistication of their airplane maintenance techniques and mechanic’s abilities. LOL
It’s the same reason Russia doesn’t build/race BMWs and Maserati’s (or their functional equivalents.) They know how to design great stuff, they just can’t find anybody to competently pull a lube job and change the tires.
ADDENDUM:
I must say also, Edward is correct; this is EXACTLY the sort of those “little challenges” of Biden fame being tossed Obama’s way by the now more aggressively posturing Russian Bear–for the twin reasons of 1) sensing weakness in Obama and 2) Nukes are a cheap way to project power (as has already been pointed out by Lex) in these days of cash-flow pinch due to the collapse of oil prices because of the economic down-turn brought about by this latest world-wide financial crisis.
Oh. a 3rd, “minor” point. Those “tactical” nukes? About the only “tactical” thing about ‘em is that they are scheduled to be delivered on the “tactical” battlefield. The yield in even the smallest of them is still pretty close to Hiroshima-sized.
Which is one reason the Russians didn’t believe that a “limited” “tactical” nuclear war could ever be fought on European soil–and why they thought we were crazy to believe one could be–and train and equip that way. Score one for the “crazy man” theory of deterrence.
Re: warheads – Well, when you’re the same team who put together Tsar Bomba, and detuned it so it would “only” shatter existing records by about double instead of triple…
Even More (until you can’t take it any more):
There is a reason why truly “small” “tactical” nukes are not built. It defeats the purpose of massive destructive bang for the small buck. Why use an expensive nuke to blow up a single bridge when there are so many other cheaper alternatives? Nukes are cheap only if they do massive damage–otherwise they make no economic or tactical sense.
The idea of a small nuclear weapon sounds akin to the “small” amount of deficit spending being implemented these days. Might have similar results…
Am I off base or would a U.S. Flag Officer who made this kind of statement (even in the Bush Administration) be immediately rebuked and forced to retire?
To which statement do you refer, Sean? Admiral Burtsev’s?
I think it would probably land him in hot water, to say the least.
In the US Navy? Today? Sure, there’d probably be some repercussions, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they work the same way. This may very well be an authorized disclosure. A lot of their defense policy is set by people in uniform.
Problem is, no nuke is truly only tactical because the first time you lob one the rules of the game change. I’m sure the Russians think differently, but the rules will change and not for the better I think.
OBTW look for us to think about doing the same at some point when we have a hole in our response capabilities. Will we? Not likely unless desperate, but it’s a possibility.
Chap, that’s the point. Would the US respond to a nuclear attack on a CSG or ESG with a nuclear response? There’s no worthwhile targets at sea, so any response would have to be against a land based target, which would almost certainly lead to a general exchange.
The thinking is not so much that the Russians would engage with nukes, but rather the US would avoid provoking the Russians to engage with nukes.
And that would be “Change!”
Also: Kinda like the terrorists not being from a sovereign nation’s military. Just how do you respond “in kind?”
You don’t/can’t as you’re the “mean people” when you exchange their seaport for the lost battle group.
Kinda puts us at a disadvantage, with the MSM within and the world in general from without all thinking we just run a empire and it’s all to get their oil…
Does it make any of you well-informed warriors just a little bit nervous that Cuba has invited Russia to base some of their planes in Cuba? We were pretty worried about that many years ago when there was a Cold War going on. It seems too damn close to me, to have a possible nuclear missile there. Am I wrong to be nervous about this?
Marianne
Marianne,
No Ma’am.
Precisely because Obama ain’t no JFK much as he wishes he were…Think 1962 as I am sure you already are….
I reckon the Monroe Doctrine is just another forgotten piece o’paper.
b2
JFK wasn’t the JFK we hear about, either. It was his idea to offer up the Jupiter missiles in Turkey as a quid pro quo to Kruschev while he was sweating out the reply to his previous letter. For decades, we’ve been told that JFK made Nakita blink…not so.
There was the sellout of the guys at the Bay of Pigs. Jeez, at least have the decency to call off the invasion before it starts.
There was the whacking of the president of South Vietnam, because he wasn’t dancing to the puppet strings properly. Way to nurture our allies, Jack.
And when you look up ‘nepotism’ in the dictionary, there are pictures of the Kennedys and the Shrivers.
Appropriate name, the Camelot Administration…the original was a myth, too.
Thanks for the history lesson RIO. I just did as I was told then and hid under my schooldesk. LOL. There was no King Arthur? YGBSM.
I agree. Everything you wrote about Jack and Camelot is true however he did finally show some spine that November. That is the only point I was making for the Lady.
Let’s not forget he got to “meet” Marilyn Monroe, too. LOL#2.
b2