Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

Chapter 6: On Tactical and Operational-Tactical Nuclear WeaponsIntercontinental strategic nuclear weapons (and they were called strategic because of their intercontinentalrange) dominated and still dominate in most of the strategic stability equations. Tactical(and operational-tactical) weapons were factored out, although in fact, the majority of suchweapons were comparable to the warheads deployed on strategic carriers in terms of their yield. 57Tactical (and operational-tactical) nuclear weapons had dominated as the principal instrument ina potential limited nuclear war. This was especially typical of the type of tactical nuclear weaponsdesigned for use in battlefield warfare; apparently, the most significant type of weapons of thissort were the nuclear warheads held by U.S. and Soviet cannon artillery (for 155 mm and 152 mmhowitzers, respectively). The development of this concept of warfare and its introduction to thebranches and arms of each side’s armed forces was soundly deemed a very dangerous tendencythat threatened the very erosion of the borderline between conventional and nuclear war. 58Compared to the 1960s and 1970s, the number of tactical (and operational-tactical) nuclearweapons possessed by all official nuclear powers has considerably decreased. However, they arestill part of the arsenals and remain an important constituent of the aggregate combat strengthof the sides. The role of such warfare is still undetermined. Until the middle of the 1980s, tacticalweapons of the U.S. and its allies were deemed as a means of compensation for the imbalance(according to the foreign experts’ opinion) of conventional weapons and forces to the good ofthe Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty allies, but nowadays it’s the other way around. The role oftactical (and operational-tactical) nuclear weapons in securing the national security of Russia andRussia’s allies has increased, but it is not quite customary to speak about that in public. 59The role of such weapons is rarely discussed openly by other nuclear powers either, including theUnited States, not to mention the People’s Republic of China. Thus, the authors of the Yearbook ofthe Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Institute of World Economyand International Relations (IMEMO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences point out that thereview of the U.S. nuclear weapons policy and force structure (one of the fundamental open U.S.documents in that field) does not cover non-strategic nuclear weapons. However, the estimatednumber of such nuclear munitions deployed in the United States amounted to about 500 warheadsas of 2007; another 1,155 warheads are part of the reserve. 60Traditional delivery vehicles for tactical nuclear weapons were dual-purpose—front-line strikeaircraft, medium-range bomber aircraft, artillery, ground-to-ground missiles of the ground forces,air interceptor missiles and fighter-interceptor aircraft of the air defense troops, sea-launchedmissiles and torpedoes deployed on submarines and surface ships, carrier-launched and landbasedaircraft of the Navy. 61 At certain times the number of tactical and operational-tacticalnuclear weapons deployed by the Soviet Union and the United States amounted to dozens ofthousands.Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 33