The Department of Defense, with the approval of the Obama Administration, has been working on modernizing the B61 nuclear bomb. Part of that plan is the development of a more sophisticated "dial-a-yield" system that would permit tuning it down to about a 400-ton blast. The idea is that if they have to be used, a smaller blast would result in lower environmental effects and collateral damage.
I think that is faulty thinking. Smaller yields will, in my belief, result in a greater temptation to use the damned things. The reaction to one being used will be a variant of "they nuked our guys, let's nuke their guys!" Nuclear weapons use has not happened in 70 years; if we use them, it will open the door to other nations using them. Distinguishing our use from, say, Pakistan's use based on yield factors will be widely seen as quibbling, in the same way that the law doesn't care whether you shoot at somebody with a 4.25mm Liliput or a .338 Lapua.
Once they start being used, then nobody will give a shit about the difference between a 400 ton yield bunker-buster and a 800 kiloton yield city-buster. And then we'll soon find out if the scientists were correct about nuclear winter.
"Making the world safe for the use of nuclear weapons" is hardly the sort of legacy that President Obama should want to leave. But that's pretty much what he is doing.
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It's another jobs program for the weapons industry. Moar jobs = good, amirite?
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