I will say I don’t know what Russia specifically has in thier arsenal beyond the general “tactical nukes”. But artillery shell or missle… it makes little difference. Tactical nukes are relatively new, so aren’t much of an age concern as the bigger older stuff. Functionality concerns, only they really know.
And I agree, which is why I said they are holding back. But if the situation changes, they may not need to hold back.
Like new if you time traveled from the 50s We literally conceived of a bazooka launched personal nuke. Generally speaking not much was actually made by anyone and is unlikely to have been maintained as they would have been deemed basically useless for decades as is very expensive to maintain.
Well TIL. I though they couldn’t make them that small back then. But anyway, the russians were producing the latest version of small tactical nukes in the 20 teens. Those are pretty new.
The logic behind not using them is either they can’t or they can’t. They didn’t kill a million russians and junk a fair chunk of their existing hardware for nothing. The reasonable perception is that they couldn’t take Ukraine and fight NATO at all whereas without NATO assistance historical or current Ukraine would have actually fallen in 3 days. Their ability to take Ukraine is therefore 100% a function of how well they can keep NATO out of it and nuking Ukraine blows that objective.
I will say I don’t know what Russia specifically has in thier arsenal beyond the general “tactical nukes”. But artillery shell or missle… it makes little difference. Tactical nukes are relatively new, so aren’t much of an age concern as the bigger older stuff. Functionality concerns, only they really know. And I agree, which is why I said they are holding back. But if the situation changes, they may not need to hold back.
Like new if you time traveled from the 50s We literally conceived of a bazooka launched personal nuke. Generally speaking not much was actually made by anyone and is unlikely to have been maintained as they would have been deemed basically useless for decades as is very expensive to maintain.
Well TIL. I though they couldn’t make them that small back then. But anyway, the russians were producing the latest version of small tactical nukes in the 20 teens. Those are pretty new.
The logic behind not using them is either they can’t or they can’t. They didn’t kill a million russians and junk a fair chunk of their existing hardware for nothing. The reasonable perception is that they couldn’t take Ukraine and fight NATO at all whereas without NATO assistance historical or current Ukraine would have actually fallen in 3 days. Their ability to take Ukraine is therefore 100% a function of how well they can keep NATO out of it and nuking Ukraine blows that objective.