Nika Chitadze
Professor of the International Black Sea University
Director of the Center for International Studies
After one defeat after another on the front line in the last few months, the representatives of the Russian political elite and Russian President Putin himself talk about the defense of "Russian territory by all means, including the use of nuclear weapons." After Putin announced the annexation of four districts of the occupied territories of Ukraine - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson and "joined" them to the Russian Federation, and later lost the Russian political elite and Russian President Putin control over the largest part of the Kherson district, the threat of nuclear blackmail from the Kremlin became more serious.
The fact is that for the further liberation of these
occupied Ukrainian regions, of course, the Ukrainians will not stop fighting
until their final liberation, and the Kremlin will announce that the attacks
are now directly on the territory of Russia, and it has the right to
"defend" itself by all available means, including mass with weapons
of destruction.
It is worth noting the fact that Russia has 6,000 nuclear
warheads, of which more than 2,000 should be tactical, but the word
"tactical" among military experts and perhaps even in certain circles
of society creates a mood as if the main threat is only strategic nuclear
weapons that can destroy the world. roll it out", and tactical nuclear
bombs seem like nothing much and will not change the future of war.
The matter is much more complicated - there is not a
strong separation between tactical and strategic weapons, if we focus not on
their carriers, but on the nuclear charges themselves.
For example, the strategic Soviet/Russian
intercontinental ballistic missile "Satan" (which, ironically, is
manufactured in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, which Russia is mercilessly bombing
today) can have one 20-megaton nuclear warhead or ten 500-kiloton warheads.
The power of a nuclear bomb is determined by the amount
of trinitrotoluene, that is, how many tons of TNT must be detonated to match
the power of a nuclear explosion.
Nuclear weapons are divided into five groups according to their power: ultra-small (less than one kiloton), small (1-10 kilotons), medium (10-100 kilotons), high-powered (100 kilotons to one megaton), and super-powerful (more than one megaton).
The smallest, only one kiloton,
this Soviet/Russian 152 mm caliber nuclear artillery projectile produces a 3.5
km high "mushroom" cloud upon detonation
On August 6, 1945, the American
atomic bomb detonated at a height of 600 m over the Japanese city of Hiroshima
had a yield of 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT, and three days later, on August 9, the
atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki produced an explosion of 21 kilotons of
TNT.
Nuclear explosive devices can be
placed into seven main classes of weapons. These are aviation bombs, aviation
missiles, ballistic and cruise missile warheads, artillery projectiles, depth,
bottom and bottom naval mines, naval torpedos, and ground-engineering mines.
Today, in the war with Ukraine,
the Russian army uses 23 types of conventional weapons, in which an explosive
device containing TNT and hexane can be replaced with a nuclear charge in a few
hours (or even faster) without visually making any difference from the outside,
although before combat use
Nuclear weapons can be divided
into tactical, operational-tactical, and strategic purposes.
At the tactical level, nuclear
weapons can be used with special artillery shells of 152, 155, and 203 mm
caliber, as well as with bombs and missiles of front-line bombers and tactical
aviation.
At the operational-tactical
level, long-range aviation carrying nuclear weapons, as well as short- and
medium-range cruise and ballistic missiles are used. Intercontinental and
submarine ballistic missiles and strategic missile-bomber aircraft operate at a
strategic distance, although this division is still conditional since no one
can prevent the crew of a strategic missile-bomber from using tactical nuclear
weapons within a radius of several hundred kilometers.
During a nuclear explosion, five
types of damaging factors are produced: shock waves, thermal radiation,
penetrating radiation, radioactive contamination, and electromagnetic pulse.
Shock wave - after a nuclear
explosion with a power equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, the air shock wave
covers 1 kilometer in 1.4 seconds, 2 kilometers in 4 seconds, 3 kilometers in 7
seconds, and 5 kilometers in 12 seconds. It is dangerous for humans, however,
after seeing the flash of a nuclear explosion, there is still little time left
to seek shelter or at least lie on the ground.
Heat radiation - after the atomic
explosion in Hiroshima, silhouettes of people were visible on the streets of
the city and on the walls of the destroyed buildings, which was the result of
the release of very high temperatures.
The heat radiation of a nuclear
explosion lasts for several seconds, and if a person manages to cover himself
with an opaque object (for example, a wall) during this time, then he will
survive this particular damaging factor of a nuclear explosion. If there is
nothing to cover, the person should immediately be laid face down with the feet
on the side of the explosion, and the face should be covered with the hands.
Under no circumstances should you look at a nuclear explosion - it can cause
complete blindness.
Penetrating radiation - this is
ionizing radiation, when a stream of atomic nuclei, photons, or other
elementary particles penetrates a substance and turns neutral molecules and
atoms into ions. It causes acute radiation sickness in the human body and
depends on the strength of the received dose - in case of a large dose of
radiation in a short period, which will certainly happen when the epicenter of
the nuclear explosion is near, there is almost no chance of survival.
Radioactive Contamination - A
person can survive the shock wave, heat radiation, and penetrating radiation of
a nuclear explosion and emerge from the underground shelter happy to have
survived, but he faces another hidden, but very invisible danger - the
radiation background created by highly radioactive isotopes.
Electromagnetic pulse is the only
damaging factor of a nuclear explosion, which does not directly affect human
health, but it disables electrical equipment, and if people are sitting in a
passenger plane at that time, they can become victims of an airplane accident.
There is another, no less
mass-damaging factor, which will inevitably follow the combat use of nuclear
weapons - this is fear and panic, involving millions of people who may have
witnessed the nuclear "mushroom" themselves or seen it live on
television...
The use of tactical nuclear
weapons is defined in the theater of combat operations, on the front line, and
in the close rear of the enemy. Its power equivalent to TNT is relatively small
(defined as a few tens of kilotons) and more attention is paid to the accuracy
of hitting the target.
The Soviet tactical nuclear
arsenal (which was the largest in the world and exceeded twenty thousand, of
which 350 tactical nuclear charges in the form of missile warheads, aviation
bombs, artillery shells, and mines were kept on the territory of Georgia until
the spring of 1989), Russia currently has no less than two thousand charges
that can be installed in the warheads of "Iskanders" or winged
"Calibers".
If the power of the atomic bomb
dropped by the Americans in Hiroshima was up to 18 kilotons, on the modern
Russian operational-tactical aero ballistic missile "Iskander M" it is
50 kilotons, that is, a tactical nuclear warhead with a power equivalent to the
explosion of 50 thousand tons of TNT can be installed, which, as a result of
its initiation, can be installed at a distance of at least 3-5 kilometers
Everything in the radius will be destroyed. A single tactical nuclear warhead
of this power can destroy the face of a small town. After such information, it
is a little strange to claim that tactical nuclear weapons are not much more
dangerous than conventional hex bombs.
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