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Military planners and arms control specialists in Russia, the United States, and a number of other nuclear weapon states historically have divided their arsenals into two broad categories of weapons, “strategic” and “tactical” nuclear weapons, based upon how the weapons were intended to be used. Strategic weapons were usually more powerful and intended to be used against the homeland of the enemy, to be delivered by long-range missiles or bombers. Tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) were to be used principally against enemy forces in the field, to be delivered by shorter-range fighter-bombers, short-range missiles, or artillery. Formal arms control treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union, and later, Russia, controlled deployments of strategic nuclear weapons by limiting the number and type of long-range systems intended to deliver them. Such deployments could be monitored through inspections and by means of observation satellites. None of these treaties, however, limited the number of strategic nuclear warheads or bombs the two sides could possess or required an inventory and accounting of such warheads or bombs. It was generally believed, however, that if such weapons were not deployed in the field, they were held in secure central storage.
The only legally binding document that addressed substrategic nuclear weapons was the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which provided for elimination of all land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km, although it did not address sea- or air-launched nuclear weapons within that range category. In the fall of 1991, however, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev adopted parallel unilateral declarations on tactical nuclear weapons; Gorbachev’s declaration was confirmed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992 in the name of the Russian Federation. According to these declarations (known as Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, or PNIs), the vast majority of warheads for short-range delivery vehicles were subject to either dismantlement or storage at central storage facilities. A limited number of air-launched weapons (gravity bombs and short-range missiles) were kept in the category of “deployed warheads.” PNIs included also the intermediate-range weapons that were not covered by the INF Treaty.
According to official statements, the United States completed the implementation of PNIs by the end of 2003; in 2003 and 2004, Russia declared it could complete the implementation of PNIs by the end of 2004, but only with international assistance. Although there is little reason to doubt these statements, their implementation cannot be independently verified because PNIs
did not provide for any transparency and verification mechanisms;
neither the numbers nor the locations of these weapons have been
officially released. Unofficial estimates put the number of U.S.
tactical nuclear weapons in deployed status at less than 2,000. The
estimates of the remaining Russian tactical nuclear weapons arsenal vary
widely (reaching as high as 18,000), but the number is most likely
around 3,000. (See the
NTI
Issue Brief on tactical nuclear weapons.)
It is widely believed that TNW are a particularly attractive target for terrorists because they are generally smaller and more portable than warheads for strategic delivery vehicles and might be more vulnerable to theft. These concerns, as well as inadequacies of the informal regime that addresses TNW, have led many nations to call for a strengthening of the existing regime by making it legally binding and verifiable, for enhancing their safety and security, and for further reductions of the number of these weapons.
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