pathology_doc
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Can anyone enlighten me, either by links or by a process of deduction, the process by which targets for these weapons were decided? Obviously any nation considering building them was going to need to think about how many it would build, how it was going to divide its fissile material between these and strategic nukes, and involves the important discussion of exactly what is the dividing line between the two.
What seems clear to me right now is that it's largely going to encompass high-value, mobile targets of opportunity and the means of transporting and resupplying them, e.g. divisional or corps-size formations of Warsaw Pact armour, battle-groups at sea, enemy ballistic missile submarines (whichever side you're on), US carrier battle groups (if you're the Warsaw Pact and have no carriers), large convoys, supply dumps, field tank/artillery parks and the like.
The assured single-pass destruction of absolutely non-mobile targets (e.g. railway marshalling yards, major road and rail bridges, dockyards from which fleets have already sailed or in which they are not at anchor) seems more to fit into a strategic criterion, while there are others with which there might be overlap, e.g. the nuclear obliteration of a dockyard at which a reinforced armoured division has just arrived and is being unshipped. Looking at what happened to Halifax during the First World War (the explosion of an ammo ship in the harbour with the extensive destruction which resulted), you wouldn't need even a Hiroshima-sized nuke to upset a lot of applecarts and keep that formation out of the fight.
Of course all this assumes that the widespread use of tac nukes on BOTH sides doesn't erupt into a massive strategic explosion of rage and revenge. The safest place to use them if you want to avoid that seems to be at sea, over the horizon from any land mass, where nobody's home soil is getting blasted and only "legitimate" targets are being destroyed.
I think the designers of the 1980's computer game "Theatre Europe" had a good approach. They said they couldn't NOT address the issue of nuclear weapon availability, but didn't want the game to degenerate into an exercise in what they called "nuclear ping pong". You quickly learned the number of nuclear releases you were allowed (I think it was two) before the subsequent shot would bring a massive spasm launch that lost you the game and exterminated humanity.
What seems clear to me right now is that it's largely going to encompass high-value, mobile targets of opportunity and the means of transporting and resupplying them, e.g. divisional or corps-size formations of Warsaw Pact armour, battle-groups at sea, enemy ballistic missile submarines (whichever side you're on), US carrier battle groups (if you're the Warsaw Pact and have no carriers), large convoys, supply dumps, field tank/artillery parks and the like.
The assured single-pass destruction of absolutely non-mobile targets (e.g. railway marshalling yards, major road and rail bridges, dockyards from which fleets have already sailed or in which they are not at anchor) seems more to fit into a strategic criterion, while there are others with which there might be overlap, e.g. the nuclear obliteration of a dockyard at which a reinforced armoured division has just arrived and is being unshipped. Looking at what happened to Halifax during the First World War (the explosion of an ammo ship in the harbour with the extensive destruction which resulted), you wouldn't need even a Hiroshima-sized nuke to upset a lot of applecarts and keep that formation out of the fight.
Of course all this assumes that the widespread use of tac nukes on BOTH sides doesn't erupt into a massive strategic explosion of rage and revenge. The safest place to use them if you want to avoid that seems to be at sea, over the horizon from any land mass, where nobody's home soil is getting blasted and only "legitimate" targets are being destroyed.
I think the designers of the 1980's computer game "Theatre Europe" had a good approach. They said they couldn't NOT address the issue of nuclear weapon availability, but didn't want the game to degenerate into an exercise in what they called "nuclear ping pong". You quickly learned the number of nuclear releases you were allowed (I think it was two) before the subsequent shot would bring a massive spasm launch that lost you the game and exterminated humanity.