Eli5 what’s the difference between a “tactical” nuke, and just an ordinary nuke?
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Size.
Tactical nuclear weapons are less powerful and also smaller, which makes them easier to deliver. For example, they could be launched as an artillery shell, which would not be possible with a larger warhead.
Yield.
A tactical nuke is a low-yield device meant to cause “limited” destruction.
Its based on the difference between tactical level operations and strategic level operations. Tactical is basically the tactics and techniques used on a battlefield. Strategic are war-wide strategies. A strategic nuke is high yield meant to deter or control the actions of an opponent during conflict.
Tactical nukes are in theory to be used on the battlefield either blowing up large formations of armour or troops or denying a particular area to troops to attack across, strategic nukes are about winning a war in a single massive attack on cities or other key targets.
Replace the word normal with strategic, and that’s the answer, tactical can hit small targets, a couple of city blocks for example, lower yield and cleaner.stategic are the starfish prime type stuff
A “normal” nuke is meant to accomplish a strategic objective – taking out a major target, like a military complex or an entire city. Indiscriminate destruction.
Tactical nukes are small scale, intended to limit the amount of destruction but are capable of more destruction than conventional weapons.
For example, a tactical nuke might target a convoy or formation of vehicles. An artillery or missile strike might be too inaccurate to deal any real damage – maybe knock out a handful of tanks. A tactical nuke is going to wipe the whole unit.
The differences are in *yield*, *range*, and *purpose*. “Strategic” is the counterpart to “tactical” in this context.
**Strategy** is the action plan that takes you where you want to go, the **tactics** are the individual steps and actions that will get you there.
[Tactical nukes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon) are smaller, and they’re usually meant to be delivered “in-theatre”, i.e., within the context of a particular engagement. They’re a “tactic” for achieving a specific limited mission goal.
Like, say, you absolutely have to stop an invading column from crossing a particular bridge, a tactical nuke might be a really effective way of taking out that crossing permanently.
Or if you only need to wreck one particular forward base without damaging a nearby population center, you use a tactical nuke.
They’re usually delivered by short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, torpedoes, depth charges, etc. There were even a few designed to be delivered by [artillery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery) (but nobody deploys those anymore – they weren’t actually very practical). So, within a few km, up to a few hundred km.
They’re lower-yield: as small as .07 kilotons (72 tons TNT-equivalent), up to 100kt.
As opposed to “strategic” weapons, which are intended to achieve higher-level aims, like attempting to preempt your opponent’s ability to shoot back.
Strategic weapons tend to have higher yields, 100kt up to several megatons (a thousand kt is 1Mt), and they’re generally delivered by things like Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM), or strategic bombers (like the B-52 or [TU-95](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95)) via gravity bombs or air-launched cruise missiles.
Tactical Nuke – Enough size and distance to win a battle. I will destroy a mult-ship navy battle group. I will, knock an entire unit of troops out of the battle with one shot. I will destroy a whole forward operating base. Whole entire airfield gone.
Strategic nukes – Enough size and distance to impose cost on the other country. I will destroy cities. I will cause the kind of damage that brings your population and your economies to their knees. I’ll cause the equivalent of a natural disaster (earthquake, tornado) in your capital city.
Tactical nuke = ability to win a fight.
Strategic nuke = ability to cause so much destruction you country can’t go to war with my country because you cannot pay the cost in destruction
The difference is the size and intended use.
The original nuclear weapons were really little more than traditional bombs, just bigger – designed to do as much damage as physically possible.
This ethos continued as they were scaled up during the cold war, with bombs that were ever bigger and more destructive.
Past a certain point, those in charge realised that they were so big that there was a huge gap between the power of the current nuclear weapons and a traditional bomb, so the ‘tactical’ nuke was developed – exactly the same as the big versions, but purposely scaled down in size so they could be used for more specific purposes such as the destruction of a limited area, rather than just everything close by – to be used to accomplish a tactical objective, not just mass destruction.
Nuclear weapons are often divided into “tactical” and “strategic”. This is really an arbitrary distinction which is very appealing to some military strategists.
A tactical weapon changes the outcome of an individual battle. For a nuclear weapon, this means that it is a very small nuclear weapon which can be used precisely to attack a fairly small concentration of troops. A tactical nuke might be used to blow up a single camp of enemy soldiers, or a column of enemy supply trucks. A strategic weapon changes the outcome of a war. For a nuclear weapon, this generally means it is big and powerful enough that it can wipe out whole armies, cities, or regions.
The problem with separating nuclear weapons into these two categories is that it makes the assumption that using tactical nuclear weapons won’t lead to the use of strategic nuclear weapons, allowing a “limited” nuclear war. But there really is no reason to suspect that once the nuclear taboo has been breached, even by the use of a small weapon, that the combatants won’t escalate to using big weapons. This was the reasoning that lead to NATO and USSR signing a treaty to banning the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. Over the past few years, both sides have started breaking this treaty and redeveloping and deploying tactical nuclear weapons. In my opinion, this is a really bad trend in terms of avoiding the outbreak of nuclear war.
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