"Why are nuclear weapon going to be the preferred weapon for tactical engagements in the future? /📃🧵

The problem faced by military planners is the interaction of three technological phenomena:
1. The advancement of A2AD which has made any overflight mission dangerous.
2. The advancement of entrenchments and armour hardening materials that can make any conventional attack fail to do any damage.
3. The creation of deep underground military bunkers with extremely hardened access points.

Over time, all exposed high value assets were protected by AD, placed inside bunkers, or sat behind advanced entrenchments that could take direct hit from high calibre rounds. Did you notice how no matter how many times missiles were fired on the US/Israel in the middle east it largely amounted to nothing?

So what is really needed is a very compact weapon with a high yield, one that can be fit on a missile or small bomb carried by a stealth aircraft that can penetrate enemy radar. What's needed is something that can create a shockwave under the ground. What's needed is something that can completely ignore armour and penetrate even the hardest materials known to man.

There's only one weapon that can fulfil all these requirements: a nuclear weapon.

In the 80s, all of this was realised by military planners, and papers were put forward to advocate the use of nuclear weapons in a limited manner. People didn't like this idea though, because it was always assumed that any limited use of small nuclear weapons would eventually result in mutually assured destruction through a strategic exchange of much larger nuclear weapons designed to destroy entire cities.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed... and that was the end of the story.

Not really.

The US kept working on this concept of limited nuclear warfare. By the start of the year 1999, as part of the DoE report, the US revealed that it has successfully tested a minimal residual radiation weapon among other alarming advancements. Please refer to the report and text below:

After the 9/11 terror event [false flag], Saddam Hussein was demonised and it was claimed nuclear weapons would be required to destroy his bunkers. These were called Earth Penetrating Weapons, or Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators (RNEP). This was not received well by the public.

So, another kind of weapon was created: The completely impractical MOAB which achieves absolutely none of the tactical requirements, by being so heavy that only a few jets can launch it and only by overflying what would be heavy air defense. It could also do hardly anything against deep bunkers. The yield was also pathetic at around 2 tons. Basically, 4 Mk84s dropped by a couple of jets could have the same devastating power. But this weapon had a purpose: it was PSYOP. As long as people knew the MOAB existed, any large explosion could be pinned on it. After all, the majority of the planet doesn't understand anything about tactical engagements or even the load that jets can take on their hard points.

The stage was set: the MRRs and RNEPs could be used to achieve whatever it was the US military required without the public really having any say. Other countries, largely defeated because of the Soviet Union's fall, could do nothing but watch. After all, should they speak up, it would only normalise the usage of such weapons -- they have no form of reply to a power like the United States.

The stage was set. On March 20th, 2003, the US invaded Iraq. This invasion did not go to plan. The Iraqis put up a hell of a fight around Baghdad Airport. The airport had no more air defenses, but was hardened and had a very deep underground military bunker inside of it. The US military battalion sent to take it was handily defeated. Then suddenly, the power in Baghdad went out, and Donald Rumsfeld triumphantly announced the death of 10,000 republican guards defending

I knew what had happened, and shortly afterwards I have incontrovertible evidence of nuclear weapon use at Baghdad airport -- one I even posted on Twitter, and because I posted it, I was threatened with a permanent suspension and was forced to delete it.

It was from that point (at least as I saw it) that history bifurcated. Everyone saw a conventional victory against an army that simply vanished. What happened was something far darker. A new age was upon us -- an age where a single empire could completely destroy a nation's military using nuclear weapons while the world watched none the wiser. You see, back then, smartphones did not exist as they do today. You had to rely on journalist's transmission of news and events.

Even then, it didn't take long for the leaks to come. First from US military officers, and eventually from the Iraqis themselves.

No one but me and a few Russian/Ukrainian friends bought it though. Of all the esoteric things on the internet, this was the most esoteric and well kept secret. I never forgot it though and it really shaped the rest of my life. I went on to discover that this wasn't the first use of this weapon. I even discovered a much earlier use in the 80s which provoked the US into this line of warfare.

Today... I think it's plausible that other nations have this kind of weapon, albeit not as good as the United States'. It is in the interest of larger nations that smaller ones are kept in the dark about the existence of such system. If it turns out that nuclear weapons are now just another form of munition -- and more so, victory is now impossible without their usage, then the ultimate criminal pact of the Non-Proliferation Treaty withers away.

Then, all nations, even tiny ones, should have access to this technology. And the entire world order fades away.

To me, and to those who see things the way I do, this is exactly what is most desirable -- a far more complex and far more interesting world, where even the small players can have a huge effect on history.

/End": https://x.com/cirnosad/status/1903823840398217554