The first American submarine equipped with tactical nuclear war missiles to set sail

During the Cold War, both sides had missiles and bombs with low-power nuclear charges, intended for use not against opposing cities or industrial infrastructure, but against military forces. We then spoke of tactical nuclear weapons. The doctrine of the time wanted it to be possible to make use of these weapons, without exceeding the threshold triggering strategic fire, namely the reciprocal elimination of the adversaries with intercontinental ballistic missiles implementing strategic nuclear charges of several hundreds of kilo-tons.

Already at the time, many voices were raised against such scenarios, judging that it was impossible to predict the reaction of the adversary in the face of nuclear fire, even tactical, if it also had nuclear weapons. Recently, these are Princeton researchers who highlighted in simulations that the use of tactical nuclear weapons would most likely result in a strategic escalation. Admittedly, these theories are often criticized, with more or less objectivity. But the fact remains that crossing the nuclear threshold, tactical or not, opens up a completely unknown field of possibility, because it cannot be based on any statistical study, and whose consequences could be, incidentally, cataclysmic.

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