well at least it seems like I'm not talking total rubbish if others can see what I'm saying, I was starting to wonder. now, to follow on from MiB's 100% correct points
now -
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As to the 'artillery shell' idea, let me put this into its grave:
1) How much do you think a 0.2KT nuclear shell would cost.
2) We don't want to have heavy bombers blowing up and burning entire cities. We want to destroy targets, not blast the whole area into dust.
it's not an idea, it's a actual piece of hardware, and yes, it would cost a lot if I was to go and buy one, but I'm not a military industrial complex (look it up) as I said before, 'cost' isn't such a factor in that equation then and as MiB pointed out, I said it would be used instead of a heavy bomber strike, thus saving the tens of millions of dollars of aircraft and the lives of the crews in the process, and as for a bombe strike being different from a nuclear strike, have you seen a picture of Hiroshima? it looks very much like the cities hit by saturation bombing in WW2
<B>radiation</B> this is countered by AS I SAID troops and vehicles having NBC protection on them, yes, a naked man wouldn't have a nice time if hit by a nuke, but a guy trained in NBC warfare who's sat behind a shielded and air-filtered wall of armour who knows full well that burns and radiation treatment specialists waiting behind the lines just incase anything goes wrong would not have much trouble at all as long as the thing didn't fall on their head, as with any other weapon.
<B>big bombing runs aren't needed now</B> um, Afghanistan anyone? have you seen any of the footage of the bombing of the ToraBora caves/mountains? they were full on B52 bombing runs carpeting the whole mountains in order to cave in any bunkers that weren't hit directly etc, if anything a nuclear strike might have been more effective if they have a pinpoint target as the power of a few B52 bomb loads is concentrated into one big blast, not spread out over hundreds of meters, if anything a nuke is the best precision bomb going, not the least, just think about it please
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I am quite confident that history will prove me correct when I state that the 'tactical' nuclear weapon, as it stands now, will not be used as the costs of its deployment and use outweigh the gains provided
history has already proven you wrong I'm afraid, the reason that conventional forces have been (and in most cases) still are being scaled down is that technology allows a smaller force to both be more effective, and less at risk. the whole thing about the 'nuclear battlefield' is that you have to use your forces in a more spread out and slower fashion, spread so they are not at risk from battlefield nukes and slower as everyone is working in protective gear. wars don't make the place nice to live in, a nuclear war is just an extra stage of damage to the battle area
the cold war was won by the 'cost' of designing and stockpiling nukes, not the use of them, again, if you want me to explain that one please say, don't throw down random words to prompt me to correct you. the whole point of a weapon is that the threat is a big part of it's value, if you actually have to use it then the people you're shooting at obviously don't think much of it
you keep talking about 'urban environments' as I fear you have just watched some Gulf War footage on the news, the fighting in Iraq is happening all over the place, from open deserts to cave/mountains ranges to marsh and river deltas, yes, AND towns and cities, but have you ever thought that the only TV footage that gets back is filmed by the reporters who hang around the towns and cities? the desert's not a nice place, why film the troops out there when you can do so from the cafe you're sat at instead
war still happens outside of cities, don't watch 5 mins of TV news and forget everything else please (and yes, I know the world started on 9/11, but please)
and as for bombs 'killing everyone' look at your own figures, when it says '50% casualties do you know what that means? not 100% dead, not even 50% dead, a war casualty is when a trooper is wounded to the point that they can no longer fight. that might mean just knocked out, or a bullet wound that they need a few weeks to recover from, it goes all the way up to death, about 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 'casualties are deaths (depending on a whole number of environmental, tactical and operational matters) so a hit that does 50% casualties only actually KILLS around 13% of the people it hits, the rest might not be happy, but they'll be alive
that might make it sound like a crappy weapon, but a live casualty is more of a drain of army resources than a death, evacuation and medical facilities etc, one reason that many armies like small bullets and little anti personnel mines is that they tend to wound, not kill to keep that 3/4 figure as high as possible, a nuclear bomb would be like any other bomb, you get in close and you die, further out and you're so badly injured that you're tying up resources for weeks, moths even back at base camp, I a long war efficient killing isn't wanted, efficient wounding is, we're bombing them into the stoneage, not fighting like we're from the stoneage
the problem with deploying small but obviously nuclear weapons in the future is that people who have no clue about them will go off on one, not realising we're basically using them now with DU, you can try to educate people about it, but sometimes it isn't easy to do so as they just shout about how it only takes one nuke to blow up the universe and ignore you
and as for the most horrific weapons ever developed, you like bio weapons more i take it? a nuke is a bang and a buzz, bio attacks can go on killing and deforming with full lethality for generations, and they can spread without any kind of high tech delivery system, they'r ethe cheapest WMD around, nukes are NICE compaired to them
I await your reply.