there are giant bombs like MOAB with the same explosive power of a small tactical nuke. Why don’t they just use the small nuke?
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1. Using a nuke is the ultimate red line in warfare. Cross it and it basically gives everyone else permission to use nukes, biological and chemical warfare against you.
2. Nukes are really expensive
3. They FUBAR the area for quite some time
4. Public opinion across the entire globe has you down as the country that used nukes, FULLY KNOWING what that means.
Nukes raise all sorts of international concerns and anxieties. There are treaties in place and the MOAB is a conventional weapon.
Radiation. With conventional weapons like MOAB you don’t get radiation. Plus using nukes is bad PR.
It’s nowhere near the exposive power of a small tactical nuke. A MOAB has an explosive power of 11 tons. Which is a lot, but still in the same ballpark as the largest bombs used in WW2.
Even small nuclear weapon however are measured in several hundred tons, most in the kilotons. The difference is destroying a building, and destroying a city centre.
Bombs have consequences proportional to their yield. Nukes have consequences independent of their yield.
1: it’s a war crime. We’ve essentially decided not to use nukes ever unless it’s absolutely necessary to stop an existential threat to our country.
2: nukes are radioactive and the radiation can effect people outside of the immediate blast zone.
3: nukes are a lot more expensive than really big bombs.
there are a great deal of sociopolitical issues that come along with use of nuclear weapons that you don’t get with conventionals that even greatly exceed tactical nuke capacity.
the W54 tactical nuclear warhead was built as small as 10 ton yield…not megaton, just ton…almost identical to the conventional MOAB.
but you can drop MOAB bombs on targets all day long and nobody bats an eye, drop one tactical nuke and you’ve likely triggered WWIII
The GBU 43/B has a blast yield of 11 tons of tnt. Everyone likes to think of the Hiroshima bomb of 15 kt of tnt = 15,000. A tactical nuke can be as small as 1 kt = 1,000. To summarize:
Moab: 11
Hiroshima: 15,000
Tactical: 1,000
Ya, the Moab is tiny compared to any nuclear weapon.
Your premise is incorrect.
The MOAB weighs 21,700 lbs, 18,700 lbs of which is warhead.
That is not even 10 tons of conventional explosives.
In what world does “10 tons of conventional explosives” get prefaced with “not even”? One where nukes exist, one of the smallest being the [W54](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54), whose LOWEST yield estimate was 10 tons TNT equivalent.
Geopolitically, there is no such thing as a small nuke. If anyone uses a nuke then it means *nuclear war has started* and then a billion people die.
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