Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

embraced lessons learned from the 1973 Arab-Israeli
War <strong>and</strong> developed new tactics to counter a possible
Warsaw Pact attack.
In the mid-1970s, I returned to Europe as a field
artillery brigade comm<strong>and</strong>er. Three of my four battalions
were nuclear-capable, <strong>and</strong> two of those—Lance
missile units—were given a conventional capability
while I was in comm<strong>and</strong>. The third nuclear battalion—an
eight-inch howitzer unit—had the same rather
cumbersome nuclear projectile that I was cursed
with in the 1950s! The Lance battalions were equipped
with advanced technology <strong>and</strong> nuclear explosive devices
that required little or no assembly <strong>and</strong> maintenance.
Also, peacetime storage of nuclear weapons
was centralized. I had the added responsibility for
<strong>NATO</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong> Site 4 in Giessen, Germany, at which
were stored several hundred nuclear weapons from a
variety of units. In an alert, even in peacetime, these
weapons were generally required to be evacuated to
delivery units, adding an additional complication to
route planning <strong>and</strong> timing.
In the late 1970s, I was assigned for 2 years to head
our liaison office to the Bundeswehr in Cologne. This
was an exciting time, during which a number of steps
were taken to insure cohesion <strong>and</strong> interoperability
between the West German <strong>and</strong> U.S. forces. I came
to underst<strong>and</strong> the deep-seated wariness of German
leaders concerning tactical nuclear weapons <strong>and</strong> their
employment, even though some German units were
equipped to deliver U.S.-controlled nuclear devices.
Not too many years before this, the U.S. Army had
ab<strong>and</strong>oned its Atomic Demolition Munitions when
military planners came to appreciate more fully that
these devices, intended to be implanted in the path
of advancing Soviet forces <strong>and</strong> detonated at the ap-
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