Is there a nuclear war in the West? The case of the Strategic Nuclear Warheads and ICBMs of the Russian Army
The West needs to make it clear that use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons is against the rules. I don’t think there’s going to be all-out nuclear war.
They have a preventive blow in the documents, that is in their strategy. We don’t. We, on the other hand, have formulated a retaliatory strike in our strategy,” Putin said.
Strategic nuclear weapons are basically Armageddon according to deBretton-Gordon. The Federation of Nuclear Scientists estimates that Russia and the West have around 6,000 warheads, so it is pretty much enough to change the planet. The acronym MAD stands for “Mutually Assured Destruction.”
The US, the UK, France and Russia are targets of these warheads because they are fitted to ICBMs that can travel thousands of miles.
Tactical nuclear weapons have a yield, or explosive power, of up to 100 kilotons of dynamite, rather than the 1,000 kilotons for strategic warheads.
If a nuclear power station is fired at, a chain reaction and contaminated with a nuke, it could occur on a scale with a nuclear strike.
De Bretton-Gordon: This is difficult to tell for certain, but my assumption is that Russia’s strategic weapons and ICBMs are probably in good condition and always ready. It is only Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons which now give it parity with the US and NATO militarily, so I expect them to be well looked after.
This could be the case for the tactical weapons. The vehicles that are mounted on the missiles are in poor condition but the warheads and missiles are in good condition, I believe. Judging by the state of the rest of the Russian Army equipment on show in Ukraine, this is a fair assumption.
It is likely that these weapons would need hundreds of miles to get into a position where they could attackUkraine, since they only have a range of up to 500 kilometers. But from a mechanical perspective it’s unlikely, in my opinion, that they would get that far.
The use of high tech components that are difficult to get in Russia is one of the reasons why these weapons rely on them.
At the heart of this move is attacking civilians rather than opposition forces. The attacks on hospitals, schools and other hazardous infrastructure are the result of this. If these are attacked, they can become improvised chemical or nuclear weapons.
The Russians hope that if the Ukrainian people quit, the military will quickly follow and they’re wrong. both are showing a lot more resilience than the Russians.
Meteorological conditions at the moment indicate that all this contamination would also head west across Europe. NATO would be able to strike straight back at Russia, if the attack on NATO was believed to be an attack on all NATO allies.
De Bretton-Gordon: The use of strategic nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely in my opinion. At the moment, it seems like this war won’t lead to a global nuclear war, as nobody can win it and it would ruin the world for many generations.
I am sure the checks and balances are in place in the Kremlin, as they are at the White House and 10 Downing Street to make sure we are not plunged into global nuclear conflict on a whim.
Biden and Putin have apparently been having private discussions about NATO taking out their tactical nukes and using long range guided missiles to do it. Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security advisor has revealed that this is the case.
I believe the Russians developed unconventional warfare tactics in Syria. (Russian forces entered Syria’s long civil war in 2015, bolstering ally President Bashar al-Assad’s regime). Assad would not be in power if he had not used chemical weapons.
The rebels were stopped from overrunning Damascus by the nerve agent attack. The four-year conventional siege of Syria’s largest city ended in chlorine attacks.
And it does not appear that Putin has any morals or scruples. Russia attacked hospitals and schools in Syria which it is repeating again in Ukraine. Unconventional warfare aims to break the will of civilians to resist, and Putin appears to be happy to use any means and weapons to achieve this.
soviet doctrine allows commanders to use tactical nuclear weapons to protect their territory from being lost
The attempted annexation of four districts through the current sham referendums makes the likelihood of tactical use very high, if these places are attacked. Local commanders should defer to Putin first before pressing their own red button.
Western military sources say that Putin is getting involved in the close battle and seems to be giving fairly low-level commanders their orders. This is extraordinary – it appears that only now Putin has lost faith in his generals after Ukraine recaptured large swathes of the north-east earlier this year – and suggests a broken command and control system, and a president who doesn’t trust his generals.
Even in an attack on a power station one assumes Putin will be involved, as the West would likely view it as an improvised nuclear weapon and act accordingly.
“We take any nuclear weapons or nuclear saber-rattling very seriously here,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this month. She also said that there are no indications that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons.
Jeremy Fleming said last week that he would hope to see indicators if the people started to go down that path. He said that there was a good chance of detecting Russian preparations.
Russia has nuclear bombs stored in military facilities and they need to be transported and loaded into either plane or stromper for deployment. Pavel Podvig, who runs the research organization Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, notes that the global community knows the location of the roughly 12 nuclear weapons storage facilities around Russia where this activity would likely originate. In order to improve the physical security of the sites, the US and Russia collaborated between 2003 and 2012 in an initiative called Cooperative Threat Reduction.
Putin was speaking at a news conference in Bishkek. He described the preemptive nuclear strike as “applied to the control points, deprive the enemy of these control systems and so on,” implying that it could even prevent a retaliatory strike.
Some background: On Wednesday, Putin acknowledged that the conflict is “going to take a while,” as he also warned of the “increasing” threat of nuclear war.
He said Wednesday that Russians wouldn’t use weapons first even if it meant we wouldn’t be the second to use them.
Biden administration officials have previously said that Moscow has been warned at the highest levels of the consequences for use of nuclear weapon in the war.
“So if we’re talking about this disarming strike, then maybe think about adopting the best practices of our American partners and their ideas for ensuring their security. We’re just thinking about it. He said that no one was shy about talking about it.
“If a potential adversary believes it is possible to use the theory of a preventive strike, and we do not, then this still makes us think about those threats that are posed to us,” he added.
On Monday, Russia unleashed a fresh wave of drone and missile attacks targeting energy infrastructure across Ukraine. The President said the strikes caused power cuts in several regions.
Nuclear Tests in the 20th Century: a History of the U.S., Soviet Union, and the Unified Approach to Nuclear Physics
Alex Wellerstein is a nuclear weapons historian at Stevens Institute of Technology. The United States and the Soviet Union carried out more than 2,000 nuclear tests in the 20th century. These proved the nuclear capabilities of the countries, they don’t guarantee that a missile or delivery system would work in the future.