As some ground wars gradually persist, the prospects are unclear and the state is stalemate; even the party that originally had strategic advantages fell into an unprecedented unfavorable situation in some areas, so the voice of taking the risk of using the tactical nuclear weapon began to look up. The superpowers are also tit-for-tat about this. There are two questions here: first, what are tactical nuclear weapons; second, it is because today's superpowers and the other side, are there really a large number of standard tactical nuclear weapons currently in service that can be put into actual combat? Strictly speaking, tactical nuclear weapons are low-equivalent nuclear weapons that can be directly invested in the actual combat battlefield. The explosion power of tactical nuclear weapons will not be less than 800 tons, the maximum will not exceed 2,000 tons TNT, and the explosion impact range will not exceed 1,500 meters. It will not seriously damage buildings and armored vehicles , and will only quickly disable humans within the impact range of the explosion wave and all other carbon-based organisms . This will achieve the tactical significance of using such weapons. The biggest benefit of tactical nuclear weapons is that
is the residual nuclear pollution in the real explosion area. After 2 to 3 hours after the explosion, its environmental radioactivity no longer has a significant killing effect on humans and other organisms. If the situation is urgent, if a considerable proportion of chemical defense suits are used, 30 minutes after the tactical nuclear weapons explosion, our army can enter the period to harvest the results. To fully meet the above standards, then in the strict sense, tactical nuclear weapons are actually only neutron bullets that are well-known to the outside world. Among the five major countries today, at least three have broken through the technology of neutron bullets, produced live ammunition and conducted explosion tests. Theoretically speaking, it means that at least three major countries have tactical nuclear weapons such as neutron bullets. But the problem is one time and another. Having neutron bullets in the Cold War era does not mean that more than 30 years after the end of the Cold War, all parties continue to have active neutron bullets. This is because the technical requirements of traditional neutron bullets, especially daily maintenance requirements, are really too strict. The technical path of the United States and the former Soviet Union, the neutron bullets developed and manufactured by
was almost exactly the same. In other words, the neutron bullets of both companies are a special branch of hydrogen bombs such as three-phase bombs . The biggest difference from ordinary three-phase bombs is that there is no reflective shell like uranium 238 ; secondly, the thermonuclear charge is not lithium deuterated 6, but the expensive and super difficult to handle tritium gas . The most troublesome thing in the production and maintenance of neutron bullets is tritium gas. This is because tritium gas must be prepared manually, and natural tritium is almost non-existent in nature. The half-life of tritium is only 12 years. A neutron bullet warhead containing more than ten grams of pure tritium gas does not take 12 years, and it must be disassembled and replaced manually after 7 to 8 years. This cycle can ensure that the neutron bomb can explode safely when it is in use. Therefore, during the Cold War era, both the United States and the Soviet Union had to continuously produce tritium gas and frequently renovate the warheads of the neutron bullets. In the end, both sides complained. After the end of the Cold War, the US side completely stopped producing tritium gas. After 2015, I wanted to restore production capacity, but after one year of maintenance, I felt it was troublesome.
gave up again. Giving up this time basically means giving up completely. Therefore, the price of pure tritium gas increased from tens of millions of dollars per gram to more than 100 million dollars. The key is that you have money but nowhere to buy. To maintain the amount of tritium used for a neutron, it must be at least 15 grams, which means that a neutron is worth at least 2 billion. Even the world's most financially powerful superpowers can't afford it, let alone the other side with a serious economic decline. So do today's superpowers still have active neutron bullets? The answer is highly likely to be no. Another reality is that the two so-called tactical nuclear weapons currently available in superpowers are actually "pseudo-" tactical nuclear weapons. One is the W87 nuclear warhead equipped on the Trident 2D5, and the other is the B2112 airdrop nuclear bomb. The equivalent of the W87 warhead is adjustable, with the minimum equivalent being 5,000 tons and the maximum equivalent being 470,000 tons. The minimum equivalent of the B2112 refurbishment bomb that can be airdropped with F35 is 300 tons and the maximum equivalent is 50,000 tons. It is considered a common tactical nuclear weapon.
In fact, this kind of cognition is wrong.Because neither W87 nor B6112, their explosion equivalent cannot be in the range of 800 to 2,000 tons TNT. The killing effect of the two after low-equivalence explosion is not mainly strong neutron flow. The so-called low-equivalence explosion between the two is to put it bluntly that it only detonates the atomic trigger, but does not detonate the thermonuclear charge. Because the explosions of 300-ton and 5,000-ton are not within the equivalent range of neutron bullets, they are both "pseudo-" tactical nuclear weapons. Since this is the case for superpowers, the other one is almost using this as a verbal intimidation. If there must be neutron bullets in the world, then tritium gas will definitely not be used as thermonuclear charges! It belongs to this family, no semicolon!
