I actually wrote that quite a while before I posted it to the blog and some of the information is now out of date. For instance we no longer employ the SIOP per se, but the current OPLAN is broadly similar in approach: massive retaliation with high-yield fusion weapons against a large-scale attack by an enemy state (cough Russia/China cough). The details are, of course, classified.

I’m still a fan of smaller weapons used in larger numbers due to the practicalities of the matter, and I’d be in favor of production of at least some Enhanced Radiation Weapons (ERWs – Neutron Bombs) to expand our strategic options. Of course, none of that is politically feasible in the current climate.

The big issue as I see it is that current technological advances in automation, manufacturing, and high-energy technologies are proceeding very rapidly, much more so than I thought likely even a few years ago. We see the lead-end of the change this will produce in the current trends of nuclear proliferation. The cost and difficulty of producing flexible semi-automated weapons platforms with nuclear capability is coming down quickly.

Our military decline, with its roots in corruption and bureaucratic fossilization, will eventually intersect with the increasing capabilities of what we currently consider third-rate nations and even non-national entities. The results will be… interesting to watch, I have not doubt.

My prediction would be that the the period 2013-2050 will see the first use of nuclear weaponry (in anger) since 1945.

And speaking of Germany:

“West German defense minister Franz-Josef Strauss had wanted nukes for his country, too. He seemed to want them so badly that Henry Kissinger, who had talked with Strauss, apparently in May 1961, notified the U.S. government that American nuclear weapons in West Germany needed to be secured, so as to make it physically impossible to take them, or to use them without U.S. consent. Strauss might simply take them, if he deemed that necessary.

The U.S. forces reacted by fortifying their nuclear bases, Der Spiegel suggested in January this year, drawing on the memory of former U.S. colonel Charles Sanford (now deceased). German greed for them apparently required the measure, in America’s view.” Found here.