Will Russia use Battlefield Nuclear Weapons?

With the war in Ukraine entering its second year, Russian President Vladimir Putin may find himself in a position where the use of battlefield nuclear weapons is necessary. Whether Putin is willing to violate the nuclear taboo is still undecided, but the prospects are growing that he may resort to such a tactic out of sheer desperation as the U.S. continues to send billions to Ukraine.  

While some argue that Putin will never use nuclear weapons, the Kremlin’s (2020) “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence” reveal how Moscow plans to use nuclear weapons far beyond just to deter existential threats. Putin’s repeated nuclear threats are in line with Russian policy. In the escalating crisis between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, Putin’s next move may be a low altitude air burst of a low-yield nuclear weapon.      

Advocates of nuclear disarmament misrepresent these weapons and dismiss the possibility of Putin using them because, as they claim, any nuclear weapon is too terrible to consider using. Nuclear engineers and deterrence practitioners, however, take a different view and clearly show how Putin can shape the effects of a battlefield nuclear weapon with an energy output equivalent to 1 to 10 kilotons (kt) of TNT. These weapons offer very realistic options because their detonations can be tailored to create limited radiological effects, while still scaring the West into submission.

To help the public better understand these misconceptions, my colleagues and I used unclassified Los Alamos Simple Effects Calculator to conduct simulations for two battlefield nuclear weapons of one and ten kilotons. Each weapon was detonated at an altitude for which the fireball would not touch the ground. This eliminates the radiological contamination of ground material. Eliminating residual radiation of an area in Ukraine, for example, is highly desirable for the Russians because they seek to occupy the country afterward.

According to our simulations, almost all radiation produced was generated in the initial detonation and dissipated within seconds. Only individuals within one kilometer or less of the air burst, suffer potential health problems. Within twenty-four hours of the detonation, the radiation for all yield-sizes at one kilometer from ground zero is limited to an hourly dose-rate that allows soldiers to move through the area and still be combat effective. In other words, a day after the detonation, soldiers can move through the blast zone without concern for suffering radiological health hazards.

Even if Russia did not aim for a fallout free zone and chose to detonate a nuclear weapon at the surface, an area of less than 1,000 meters from ground zero receives dangerous radiation. It may be surprising to many Americans to know that it would be safe to enter the blast zone within a  week wearing protective gear.

What these results communicate is that low-yield battlefield weapons produce quite different outcomes than strategic nuclear weapons whose yields can be hundreds of times larger. They are decidedly less useful in achieving discreet effects on the battlefield.

And there lies the problem—the United States has almost no equivalent responses to a Russian battlefield nuclear strike, whether it be in Ukraine or elsewhere. Even more troubling is the American failure to understand the need to develop and maintain equivalent nuclear capabilities.

The Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (2022) is a case in point. When President Biden told the United Nations General Assembly "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," he may have thought about strategic nuclear war, but Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were thinking about something much smaller.

The only way to deter the use of one or a small number of low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons by Russia is for the United States to have a toolbox with similar options. Presently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s only deterrent for these types of weapons are a small number of fighter-delivered B61 gravity bombs that are not mission ready. The Kremlin is likely to ignore the Biden administration’s threats to use non-military means. Putin already did so when he invaded Ukraine.

It is now time for President Biden to ignore his supporters in the nuclear disarmament community and finally build the low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons the nation needs. No one hated nuclear weapons more than Ronald Reagan, yet in order to create the incentives required to bring the Soviets to the table in 1987, he first had to field the Ground Launched Cruise Missile and Pershing II in Europe. President Biden should take a page from Reagan’s playbook.   

Robyn Hutchins is a nuclear engineer and senior analysts at the Nation Institute of Deterrence Studie.