For example, in the magazine Oruzhiye (“Weapons”), discussing options for a preventive nuclear strike on locations of NATO tactical nuclear forces has become a constant theme. Their hopes are as follows: if the strike is delivered with tactical nuclear weapons, the United States, with its powerful strategic nuclear forces, will not intervene; because, as the author of the proposal notes with mocking surprise, for some reason they believe that strategic and tactical nuclear war can be different.
If Russia strikes only with shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons, then, in their view, the U.S. will use this as a pretext not to employ its long-range strategic nuclear weapons and thereby not to unleash a global nuclear war. Thus, Russia supposedly needs only to neutralize 100 tactical thermonuclear aerial bombs of 500 kilotons each located at NATO air bases in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, and also to destroy Britain’s nuclear potential—because France’s constitution allows it to use nuclear weapons only for self-defense in response to a nuclear attack on its own territory. True, the author does not explain how, from the standpoint of the French constitution, a nuclear strike on a NATO air base in Germany near the French border would be assessed, if the blast wave and radioactive clouds moved toward France. With Britain the author sees no problem at all: there are four nuclear submarines with “Poseidon” missiles and nuclear warheads, two of which, ready to launch, are allegedly on combat duty in port, where they can be easily destroyed, and a third is on such duty in the open sea. The author believes that if Russia has an атомic hunter-killer submarine, it can find and destroy the single British submarine on patrol. Apparently, he does not know how difficult it is to detect a NATO submarine with its latest quieting technologies in the world ocean—let alone a specific one. Such reasoning is astonishing in its incompetence. But that is the level of Russian “experts” today, and their conclusions may be in demand.
It appears that the Kremlin has accepted the idea of a preventive nuclear strike on the West. At the same time, they fully allow that there could be a similar retaliatory strike. And they have devised how to carry out the first while minimizing the threat of the second.

V. THE QUASI-TACTICAL MISSILE

The appearance of the so-called “Oreshnik” was surprising at first. Why such an expensive-to-maintain machine, so vulnerable to strikes? It is clear that in war any weapon is used—including old tanks and guns. So why simply scrap old Yars missiles if one can remove one stage and reduce their range to 5,500 kilometers? If one can use them at least to fire dummy metal warheads? Moreover, as could be seen even from a newspaper photo of a strike on “Yuzhmash,” with no guidance of these dummies at all—as if they simply threw a handful of them, hoping one might hit something.
It is like bringing the Tsar Cannon to the front: expensive and ineffective.
But what made me wary was that the “Oreshnik” remained under the command of the Strategic Rocket Forces, where it had been from the beginning. That means the storage and delivery systems for nuclear warheads remain, as does the use of special codes (the so-called “nuclear briefcase”), and therefore the “Oreshnik” can very quickly be converted back into a ballistic missile: just remove the warhead with metal dummies and put back the old Yars warhead with slightly reduced range, which formally transfers it from strategic to tactical while preserving the former set of munitions and terrible destructive power—3–6 reentry vehicles with a total yield of up to 500 kilotons.
Thus, by creating a hybrid, formally tactical “Yars” (the same “Oreshnik”), the Kremlin has prepared a weapon for a preventive nuclear strike on Europe which, in its view, should not trigger U.S. participation in retaliation. But Moscow apparently does not hope to avoid retaliation—whether from British or French nuclear submarines.