Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolferz
Sure, get out on a battlefield and lob a few Davy Crocketts at the enemy and irradiate your own troops. They couldn't throw the thing far enough down range to prevent it. That's why the weapon was moth balled in favor of ICBM platforms. Mutual destruction was the key fundamental used to prevent such a war.
In a nuclear war, nobody wins. Plain and simple.
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The development of ICBMs and tactical nuclear weapons are largely unrelated.When the Davy Crockett entered service (1962) the first version of the Minuteman was under development and the Titan missile was active.ICMBs replaced to a large extent nuclear bombers the move was started y the Soviets who where unable to content with the USAF bomber force so they changed the game to missiles the US followed suit after Sputnik.
The concept of tactical nuclear weapons was really more to discourage a conventional conflict something that Warsaw Pact had a chance of winning.By having tactical nukes it forced Warsaw Pact to consider the consequence of a conventional attack very heavily (knowing that NATO would use tactical nukes to stop it this forces their hand more or less to only consider nuclear war which is no win.)It actually furthers the concept of MAD by saying "attack us in any way and it goes full scale." The US just got a little carried away with the Davy Crockett.
Nature and the rest of the universe will be happy to watch us nuke each other out of existence I have no doubt it will happen sooner or later.It might screw up the planet for a while but on the time scale of the universe 10,15 even 50,000 years is nothing.