|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Srl | Item |
1 |
ID:
132165
|
|
|
Publication |
2014.
|
Summary/Abstract |
In 1991, U.S. President George H. W. Bush decided to retire almost all the tactical nuclear weapons operated by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. His reasons were simple: these short-range weapons were militarily useless and imposed significant burdens on the armed forces in terms of money, manpower, and time. Twenty-three years later, only one type of tactical nuclear weapon remains in the U.S. inventory: the B-61 gravity bomb. In addition to the several hundred B-61s located at home, the United States currently deploys around 180 of them in Europe, at bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. In the event of a nuclear conflict on the continent, NATO would deliver the bombs via U.S.-built F-15 or F-16 aircraft or European-built Tornado fighters, operated by some combination of Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian, and U.S. crews. Originally intended to prevent Soviet forces from penetrating Western Europe, the planes could travel as far east as Russia. But owing to their slower speed and lower altitude, they would be much more vulnerable to Russia's ground-based air defenses than would longer-range strategic bombers and missiles.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
ID:
115780
|
|
|
3 |
ID:
193916
|
|
|
Summary/Abstract |
In recent years, scholars have grappled with the risks and conditions of nuclear-conventional entanglement. One of the examples of entanglement discussed in the academic literature is U.S. nuclear command and control satellites, which have historically served both nuclear and conventional missions. From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. Air Force made a series of programmatic decisions that would, at least in part, reverse this entanglement, separating nuclear from non-nuclear spacecraft. This reversal of nuclear-conventional entanglement in outer space poses strategic consequences, but it was less a strategic choice made by U.S. leadership than the result of acquisition reforms and bureaucratic dynamics.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|