There really is no such classification, the term was first used iirc by MacArthur who wanted to use cobalt bombs all along the border of China and Korea during the Korean war.
You’re thinking of “assault weapon,” assault rifle is a specific class of firearms with a stable definition that has been adopted by militaries including the US army
Yes-ish, you’re mostly right as there are specific weapons types for specific uses. Using a full size h-bomb designed for striking a city to hit an armored group doesn’t magically turn it into a tactical weapon even if the use itself might be said to be. The people responding to you are ignorant or just playing with words in a “acktually” type way. While there isn’t any I suppose international standards body definition of the fact, tactical nuclear weapons are smaller and understood to be smaller because they’re for battlefield use and you don’t want to hit your army which is often in fairly close proximity. One can look at descriptions of payload size for various tactical nuclear weapons in NATO and Soviet arsenals to verify this. Nuclear artillery shells exist for instance and very much are tactical not strategic weapons. There’s definitely some grey area around missile delivered types given the varying megatonage but tactical weapons.
Just because something doesn’t have a hard and fast concrete definition doesn’t mean there aren’t connotations commonly understood to have some meaning in a certain way.
Specifically US and Soviet Union had several rounds of agreements on reductions of and control of nuclear forces with definitions agreed by both sides on limiting strategic weapons in one way and tactical nuclear weapons in another way. They used these terms, these aren’t imaginary terms they are ones recognized by major powers and military planners and weapons designers and are valid and real and carry real meanings.
Tactical nukes in another sense are meant to be deployed to the battlefield, often with mobile launchers or by aircraft whereas stationary/silo ICBMs are I believe nearly entirely strategic weapons in the case of Russia and the US (China is another matter).
Oh i thought tactical nukes were just like a smaller class of nuke.
There really is no such classification, the term was first used iirc by MacArthur who wanted to use cobalt bombs all along the border of China and Korea during the Korean war.
Ah so its one of those terms that means nothing but also means whatever you want it to mean?
it’s like ‘assault rifle’
You’re thinking of “assault weapon,” assault rifle is a specific class of firearms with a stable definition that has been adopted by militaries including the US army
Yes-ish, you’re mostly right as there are specific weapons types for specific uses. Using a full size h-bomb designed for striking a city to hit an armored group doesn’t magically turn it into a tactical weapon even if the use itself might be said to be. The people responding to you are ignorant or just playing with words in a “acktually” type way. While there isn’t any I suppose international standards body definition of the fact, tactical nuclear weapons are smaller and understood to be smaller because they’re for battlefield use and you don’t want to hit your army which is often in fairly close proximity. One can look at descriptions of payload size for various tactical nuclear weapons in NATO and Soviet arsenals to verify this. Nuclear artillery shells exist for instance and very much are tactical not strategic weapons. There’s definitely some grey area around missile delivered types given the varying megatonage but tactical weapons.
Just because something doesn’t have a hard and fast concrete definition doesn’t mean there aren’t connotations commonly understood to have some meaning in a certain way.
Specifically US and Soviet Union had several rounds of agreements on reductions of and control of nuclear forces with definitions agreed by both sides on limiting strategic weapons in one way and tactical nuclear weapons in another way. They used these terms, these aren’t imaginary terms they are ones recognized by major powers and military planners and weapons designers and are valid and real and carry real meanings.
Tactical nukes in another sense are meant to be deployed to the battlefield, often with mobile launchers or by aircraft whereas stationary/silo ICBMs are I believe nearly entirely strategic weapons in the case of Russia and the US (China is another matter).