Depleted uranium ammunition is mainly used to pierce the armor of military vehicles such as: battle tanks or troop transport vehicles and they are also useful against the hull of warships.
Tactical nuclear weapons are by definition lso it has benefits on the battlefielda real military use against an enemy force, and the most common academic definition is that these are 1 to 50 kiloton bombs placed on projectiles with a range of up to 500 kilometers.
To have an idea of its size, we can remember The bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the United States in 1945 was 15 kilotons and was dropped from a bomber.. However, tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered from ships, aircraft, and even ground forces, in the case of Russia.
Although they have the same explosive energy and cause radiation pollution affecting the air, soil, water and food chain, they are far more destructive than a conventional warhead.
Such tactical nuclear weapons not included in any nuclear arms control treaty and medium-range ones were only in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement, which was in effect from 1987 to 2018.
deterrence
On the other hand, strategic nuclear weapons, deterrence and mutual destruction capability He was confident that he had mastered the Cold War. The United States and Russia have reduced their arsenal of these weapons from 19,000 and 35,000 to 3,700 and 4,480 by January 2022.
“Large-scale nuclear attacks are considered impossible. Strategic nuclear weapons lose their deterrent value in a war between nuclear powers. “Tactical nuclear weapons are more likely to be used in theory, so having them would strengthen a country’s deterrence,” said Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, USA.
Despite their greater power, the military usefulness of tactical nuclear weapons is questionable, as bombs with conventional explosives become more powerful to the point where the United States reduces their numbers. Most of the 150 B61 gravity nuclear bomb arsenal is in Europe.
France and the UK completely eliminated their tactical arsenalsAlthough Pakistan, China, India, North Korea and Israel have such bombs.
Doubtful military benefit
US military studies have concluded that: To cause serious damage, a one kiloton tactical nuclear bomb would have to be detonated within 90 meters of a main battle tank.. Research into its use in a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan shows that a 5 kiloton Pakistani tactical nuclear bomb used against an Indian main battle tank regiment could destroy about 13 tanks.
Russia for its part possesses about 2,000 tactical nuclear bombs Due to its low capacity and technological advances in conventional weapons, it has a very important role in its nuclear strategy.
They are mostly prepared for use on air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs, and depth bombs carried by medium-range tactical bombers or anti-ship or anti-submarine torpedoes.
In recent years, Russia has developed conventional and nuclear dual-use missiles. Some worries in Washington, because what kind of explosive head he carries is unknown until the last moment. In particular, the production of Iskander-M missiles, which has always been used to attack certain targets in Ukraine with non-nuclear explosives, was expanded.
However, the use of Russian nuclear weapons in Ukraine it doesn’t make much sense. “I think it cannot achieve a military purpose. It pollutes the lands that Russia sees as part of its historical empire and it will probably affect the Russian territory itself. “It will increase NATO’s chances of direct intervention and destroy Russia’s image in the world,” said Nina Srinivasan Rathbun.
Like this Its deployment in Belarus has more to do with the Tsar Bomb., a hydrogen bomb developed by the Soviet Union and detonated in the Barents Sea. It had more than 50 megatons of power, and its size didn’t make it very useful at the combat level, but it did function at the propaganda level.