Eli5 what’s the difference between a “tactical” nuke, and just an ordinary nuke?
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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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