For decades the world hung on the brink of nuclear annihilation, and despite the certain
total destruction promised by nuclear war, military planners in both the United States
and the Soviet Union sought ways to come out ahead in a potential exchange.
Some of these plans were based on completely unrealistic assumptions, others might have
had a chance of success in a real nuclear exchange.
What was overwhelmingly certain however was that in nuclear war, losses on either side
would be staggering.
But just how did the US military plan on fighting a nuclear war?
When you hear the term “nuclear war”, you probably think of an all-out exchange
and the end of civilization, and this is certainly a likely outcome.
Yet nuclear war isn't as cut and dry as a single, full-exchange scenario, and both the
Soviet Union and the United States knew this.
Nuclear weapons were extremely useful for both sides- for the United States it offered
a way to neutralize the Soviet Union's massive numbers advantage against it.
For the Soviet Union it was a way to neutralize the United State's technological edge.
Both sides had plans for nuclear weapons in even a conventional war, and some local commanders
on both sides even chafed at the need to seek higher authority than themselves to use nuclear
weapons.
President Eisenhower initially believed that nuclear weapons were no different than any
other bomb or bullet the military used, and saw no reason why they couldn't be used against
dedicated military targets.
However as nuclear weapons grew in destructive potential and their use proliferated to the
Soviet Union and other nations, he very quickly changed his mind.
However, what did not change was the possibility of using them against strictly military targets.
In Europe, the US military planned on using small tactical nuclear weapons against Soviet
armor and infantry forces.
While technologically superior and better trained, US and NATO forces were vastly outnumbered
by the forces of the Soviet Union and its Soviet bloc allies.
Both sides knew that tactical nuclear weapons were the only chance at stopping the Soviets
from washing across Europe like a giant tide.
For this purpose, battlefield commanders would be briefly authorized to launch limited nuclear
attacks using small and low-yield weapons, but only against dedicated military targets.
Attacks on military targets close to population or industrial centers were strictly forbidden,
as it was hoped that attacking only military targets deployed in the field would limit
the possibility for escalation.
If US nuclear attacks did not hit civilian or industrial centers, then the Soviets may
respond with tactical nuclear strikes of their own but not initiate a full-response targeting
American civilian and industrial sectors.
It was a dangerous gamble, but it was the only way to secure victory against the Soviet
Union.
Today nuclear war planning takes a similar and flexible approach, seeking to limit the
possibility of unchecked escalation.
While the United States currently has the conventional military power to defeat Russia
or China without the need of nuclear weapons, should that balance of power change we can
envision how the US would respond to a nuclear war.
Today the US maintains a very small inventory of tactical nuclear weapons, and these weapons
can only be delivered via military aircraft- a far cry from systems such as the man-portable
Davy Crockett tactical weapon which could be fired by a group of three men at columns
of Soviet tanks.
In a fictional scenario where Russia or China achieved numerological and technological parity
with the US, and war broke out, these low-yield tactical nuclear weapons would make up the
first salvo of a nuclear war.
With approximately 500 B61 gravity bombs, the United States would quickly begin arming
F-16s and F-35s with these variable yield weapons.
Initially they would be launched against enemy positions, hitting large concentrations of
troops and much like in the Cold War, avoiding striking at civilian or industrial centers.
One major problem with Cold War era war planning was that despite Soviet military targets being
the initial focus in a nuclear exchange, launching an attack against these targets without complete
and total surprise would take so long that most of the equipment and personnel at these
sites would have been evacuated.
Some mission-critical hardware and structures that could not be physically moved would be
destroyed, and the site rendered inoperable for several weeks, but most of the actual
military targets the US was looking to destroy would avoid the attack by simply dispersing.
Today dispersion is less of a concern thanks to greatly improved surveillance and attack
capabilities that the Cold War US could only have dreamt of.
Advanced reconnaissance satellites can easily pinpoint the movement of enemy troops and
hardware, and global communications afforded by satellite links can easily connect pilots
on strike missions with the intelligence needed to hit the right targets.
Thus in a modern scenario, American F-16s and F-35s would immediately be launched in
attacks against enemy troop formations.
It would be expected that the enemy would retaliate in kind, and it's even hoped so.
After all if enemy forces retaliated with similar tactical nuclear strikes, they might
feel satisfied and not need to escalate the exchange.
To limit their own losses, American units would widely disperse, while other US assets
sought to interfere with or destroy the complex communications and intelligence chains of
assets required for accurate targeting.
The next level of nuclear escalation would come if the US believed that a greater expansion
was inevitable, or if enemy forces began the escalation themselves.
The United States would next move to attack more strategic, rather than tactical, targets,
striking out at enemy military installations and communications hubs.
These attacks may still be carried out with airborne assets, but other than the B-2 stealth
bomber, it's not likely any American aircraft would survive long enough to deliver their
bombs to assigned targets deeper in enemy-held territory.
Instead, the United States would need to use either submarine launched ballistic missiles,
or SLBMs, or traditional ICBMs.
Modern American weapons feature the ability to produce variable yields, scaling up or
down their destructive potential.
Future American nuclear weapons will even be able to scale their yields down as low
as 2% of the bomb used on Hiroshima.
This gives the US options that would hopefully limit the expansion of a nuclear war.
By using low yield weapons against non-civilian or industrial targets, it's hoped that if
any response was forthcoming, then that response would similarly target American military and
communication targets with low-yield weapons and avoid industry and population centers.
One certain target would be Russian or Chinese nuclear weapons, and this presents a problem
for US war planners.
It is not believed that SLBMs have the penetration power to permanently shut down an enemy ICBM
field, requiring the use of ICBMs for the job.
American ICBMs however would be themselves immediately targeted by enemy ICBMs, unless
again the American attack was a bolt-out-of-the-blue which achieved complete surprise.
With submarine-based weapons lacking the penetration power of ICBMs, and American ICBM fields in
the US being immediately counter-attacked by enemy nuclear strikes, this means that
the US faces a conundrum: while it wishes to limit the scope of the war, not using all
of its available ICBM inventory at the start of a war means that it will never get a chance
to do so, as any unlaunched ICBMs will be destroyed by enemy counter-attacks.
It is the traditional use-it-or-lose-it scenario, and one that many fear means that a limited
escalation is all but impossible.
If the US chose to use ICBMs only to strike at military targets and enemy missile fields,
and left those targeting major population and industrial centers for deterrence unlaunched,
then they would be destroyed in the ensuing counterattack and the US would forever lose
the ability to launch its most high yield weapons.
In this scenario the United States would have given up nuclear parity and deterrence from
escalation by holding cities under threat, for the sake of striking a few military targets,
losing nearly half of all its nuclear capabilities while using only a small fraction of them
in return.
Should any enemy nuclear missile fields remain operational after the attack, the US would
be at a severe disadvantage going forward.
It's likely then that striking at only military targets is impossible, and the US would simply
opt for escalating one more rung up the ladder.
This would involve adding enemy industrial and economic hubs to the list of approved
targets for nuclear strike, with the aim being of preventing attacks against population centers
but still destroying the enemy's ability to continue fighting.
At this point in a nuclear war, targeting would have the dual purpose of not just stopping
the enemy's ability to fight today, but ensuring that the enemy is far too damaged economically
or politically to rebuild faster than the United States in the post-war period.
For US nuclear war planning, considerations on the US achieving superiority in the post-war
period are given highest priority.
The next step in the nuclear war ladder is an all-out exchange, with the targeting of
major population centers.
This is in fact not an active war plan of the United States, meaning that a massive
attack against enemy cities is not actually planned for as part of any war planning.
Rather, a massive all-out exchange would be the causality of an increasingly escalating
nuclear war.
The ability to target and destroy cities is held only as a deterrent, hopefully convincing
the enemy that escalating past the previous rung on the nuclear ladder is simply not worth
it.
If however an initial attack was detected, or even just feared, the US may simply opt
to attack first.
As part of its commitment to safeguard allies under its nuclear umbrella, the United States
retains a nuclear first strike policy to this day.
As nuclear war escalates, a select portion of American military and nuclear assets would
immediately go into reserve in sheltered locations.
US war planning dictates that a strategic reserve of both nuclear weapons and conventional
forces be established during a nuclear conflict, so that in the post-war period the United
States still has access to some level of conventional military power as well as nuclear weapons
for defense.
Even in a post-nuclear war involving an all-out exchange and the destruction of most major
cities around the world, the same nuclear weapons that brought about the end of the
world would remain ready to launch a new apocalyptic war for whoever survives.