Nuclear strategy Facts for Kids

Nuclear strategy is all about how countries think about and plan for using nuclear weapons. It's a special part of military strategy that looks at how these super powerful weapons can be used to achieve a country's goals.

It's not just about actually firing nuclear weapons, whether in a small fight or a big war. A huge part of nuclear strategy is using them as a way to negotiate or warn other countries.

Some of the big questions in nuclear strategy include:

Why would a country want to build nuclear weapons?
What kinds of nuclear weapons should they create?
How and when might these weapons be used?

Many experts believe that nuclear strategy is very different from other types of military planning. The weapons are so incredibly powerful that using them to "win" a war in the traditional sense isn't really possible.

It might seem odd, but a major focus of nuclear strategy is actually figuring out how to prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used. This idea is a key part of something called mutual assured destruction. Countries also try to stop other nations from getting nuclear weapons, which helps keep a balance of power in the world.

Nuclear Deterrence: How Countries Stop Each Other

The idea of mutual assured destruction (often called MAD) means that a country's nuclear weapons must be strong enough to survive an attack. If one country launches a first strike, the other country must still have enough weapons left to strike back. This "second strike" would be so powerful that it would destroy the attacking country. So, a first strike would be a disaster for the country that launched it.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union worked hard to find different ways to deliver nuclear weapons. They found three main ways that worked best. These are often called a "nuclear triad":

Air-delivered weapons: Bombs or missiles dropped from planes.
Submarine-launched missiles: Missiles fired from special nuclear-powered submarines (called SSBNs).
Land-based missiles: Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) usually kept in strong underground missile silos or on special vehicles.

Even though they weren't part of the main nuclear deterrent forces, many countries also had a lot of tactical nuclear weapons during the Cold War. These were smaller nuclear weapons that could be delivered by almost any vehicle that could carry large regular bombs.

During the 1970s, there was a worry that the combined armies of the Warsaw Pact (led by the Soviet Union) could overpower NATO forces in Western Europe. It seemed impossible to respond to an invasion with huge strategic nuclear weapons, as that would cause a terrible nuclear war. So, new technologies were developed to reduce damage to cities and people, while still being effective against enemy armies.

One example was the low-yield neutron bomb. These bombs were deadly to tank crews, especially when tanks were close together. But they caused less blast, heat, or radioactive fallout than other nuclear weapons. Other technologies were called "suppressed radiation devices." These mostly produced a huge blast, similar to a very powerful conventional explosive, but with much less radioactivity.

Nuclear strategy facts for kids

Nuclear Deterrence: How Countries Stop Each Other

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