² Even the most cursory catalogue of known Army nuclear weapons gives some idea of the complexity of their control and orchestration. The smallest of our nuclear weapons is the Davy Crockett, a recoilless rifle that can fire a nuclear shell with a minimum blast of 40 tons of TNT for 2.5 miles. More important is that old workhorse of American battle, the 155 mm. howitzer, which can fire both conventional and nuclear weapons with a blast up to 100 tons and has a range of 11 miles. Both of these “little” weapons must be motor-drawn or motor-borne. The army’s 8-inch howitzer fires a 2-kiloton nuclear warhead for distances up to 10-plus miles. From there, swiftly, the range and blast increase: the Little John rocket will go 12 miles with over 20 kilotons (just how much more is classified); the Honest John rocket is bigger and will go as far as 25 miles; the Sergeant, also 100 kilotons plus, will go 135 miles; and the Pershing, America’s biggest “tactical” rocket, will heave a 200-kiloton warhead 400 miles. The last three rockets can deliver warheads many times more violent than the primitive Hiroshima bomb of 20-kiloton blast.
There are several technical points to be made about the use of the word “conventional” in referring to such weapons. The first is that, though it is true the smallest warheads can be tooled down to a blast power equal only to the blockbusters of World War II, it is uneconomical to do so if we can use much cheaper, old-fashioned explosives to do the old-fashioned conventional job. The second is that, though war-game theory can establish certain principles as conventional assumptions of deterrence or non-deterrence, the use of tactical nuclear weapons is far more complicated; no real doctrine exists to guide our soldiers in their behavior or response on the nuclear ground battlefield. Thankfully, war games have not yet been played with actual nuclear weapons to establish how they do fit into the command orchestration.