cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/28496413
Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, and be willing to consider allowing Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles to be used inside Russia.
Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.
“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”
The modern tactical nuke is as strong as what the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People have this idea that a tactical nuke is ‘small’, but what is really the case is they are full sized nukes, and strategic nukes are simply larger. From a MAD perspective, there is no reason why dropping a nuke the strength of what was dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki would somehow be notably different than a larger nuke.
tacnukes were obsoleted by DPICM and later PGMs