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Many critics say that is an optimistic scenario that assumes there will be no miscalculation on the US side

Miscalculation in war is a given. War itself is a miscalculation.

Some wise person, whose name I cannot recall, once said that war plans always go awry once the first shot is fired.

National Nuclear Security Administration...yet another administration

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/us-nuclear-weapons-first-low-yield-warheads-roll-off-the-production-line

The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Tridentmissiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear conflict.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in an email it had started manufacturing the weapon at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, as ordered by Donald Trump’s nuclear posture review (NPR) last year.

The NNSA said the first of the new warheads had come off the production line and that it was on schedule to deliver the first batch – an unspecified number referred to as “initial operational capability” – before the end of September, according to the email, first sent in response to an enquiry fromExchange Monitor, which covers the nuclear weapons complex.

The Trump administration has argued the development of a low-yield weapon would make nuclear war less likely, by giving the US a more flexible deterrent. It would counter any enemy (particularly Russian) perception that the US would balk at using its own fearsome arsenal in response to a limited nuclear attack because its missiles were all in the hundreds of kilotons range and “too big to use”, because they would cause untold civilian casualties.

Low-yield weapons “help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely”, the 2018 nuclear posture review said.

Many critics say that is an optimistic scenario that assumes there will be no miscalculation on the US side…

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