The appearance of the atomic weapon at the end of the World War II supposed a milestone in the exposition, development and manifestation of the wars. The industrial modern powers, not necessarily advanced (neither China nor India were it), could develop, on having ended the World War and in a ripeness period of around 30 years, first the nuclear weapon of fission and then that of fusion. The military revolution that supposes the atomic weapon resides in the frightening concentration of fire, in time and place, of which it is capable. For example, an atomic bomb of 20 kilotons of TNT is equivalent to the simultaneous and concentrated destruction power in a few km2 of 4 million 75 mm. rounds for the Schneider rapid shooting cannon.
The Atomic Weapon as the Center of the Fires Plan.
All that overcomes qualitatively the mobile and fixed barrages and the punctual and concentrated blows of fires used by the heavy artillery. Nevertheless, that keep their usefulness in the forms of fight without atomic weapons and as tactical complement of these: inside positions, in the fighting near the outside limit of these and in urbanized zones, in the mobile war and in the guerrilla and counter guerrilla warfares. With it, also, the atomic tactical weapon is raised as the king of the fires. And to the plan atomic fires, if existed, must adapt the fires plan and the aviation support, both in the preparation and development of the battles.
In difference with other known or existing weapon, the atomic weapon does not have a proportionality or direct, sufficient and habitual correlation between the means used for it (its different vectors are a rocket, a plane, a heavy artillery round) and the destructive instantaneous effect that it develops. And let’s not believe that at the end of the World War II the fires plan of a battle was paltry or a snot of turkey. But with the atomic weapon it is necessary to mobilize neither big air fleets nor artillery divisions in support, to achieve a destructive given effect.
Let’s see a case of tactical employment of the overabundance of conventional fire means. Not looking for the neutralization of the objective, but his difficult destruction. In July, 1944 the Americans were trying the break of the German front at the west of Normandy. To operationally penetrate with the Third Army of Patton in the strategic rear of this great German rejection front. The Lehr Panzer Elite Division was spreading out in static campaign fortifications, including her scanty tanks as centers of support points of the defense, at the west of Saint Ló. She was occupying a sector of 6 km abreast and 4 km in deep. On July 24, 400 American bombardiers attacked the defense positions without causing serious hurts. The following day, approximately 1600 Flying Fortress attacked systematically them. The units that were supporting the German lines were eliminated almost at complete. The ways and roads of the zone remained impracticable. Towards the midday, the area was resembling a lunar landscape. The effect on toughen, formed and motivated men was indescribable, maddening some ones.
An effect of the atomic fires is the general decrease of the efficiency of the active and passive protections. The effect of the atomic air explosion is spherical. And on a ground surface is circular. This way, the forces must spread out in subunits, looking for the circumference that borders the area, and to realize the marches in smaller or deployed groups. Avoiding this way to offer useful goals to the atomic tactical enemy fires. The armored vehicles, for their speed, maneuverability, cross-country movement and crews protection, are useful in the atomic environment fighting. The burials, in the form of trenches or reinforced pits, and the concealments, the rear slope positions, the forests and the urban and industrial (urbanized) zones, continue having an important value in the tactical defense.
The Strategic Projection of the Nuclear Weapon.
The fission weapon has a potential limited by the characteristics of her critical mass. This is the necessary mass of explosive in order that all the neutrons issued in the fission of the atoms of uranium 235 or plutonium 239, produce in turn an atomic fission and a tremendous emission of energy at an almost instantaneous speed. From a certain size, around a dozen of kilos, the own “exogenous and centrifugal” reaction drives the garbage of the reaction and the chunks of fuel still not fissioned, towards the atmosphere and the land, as part of the radioactive cloud. The fusion weapon, by her part, needs a tremendous activation energy at a temperature of million degrees. For it, she only was achieved to have when the fission weapon was at disposal. This is used as “percussion cap” for the fusion of the «explosive».
In this case, her «size» or explosive capacity only is limited by the general considerations of conception, design and assembly. It is a beyond, fundamentally technological step, which leads the atomic weapon to the areas of the national strategy and of the human morality. This way, weapons can be created with the destruction power of millions Tm. of TNT or Megatons. So, a real barbarity. To what there adds the general, extensive and indiscriminate character of the destruction on persons, equipments, goods and households in many Km around the explosion point. It is an abominable vileness, adapted for a unfavorable and implacable Final Judgment.
The Soviets, in their zeal for the more «visible big», to compensate their real lacks, managed to design the «Tsar» bomb in the 50s. It had a destructive capacity of 100 megatons. Finally, they made exploit a minor variation with almost 60 megatons of power, to avoid failures in the operation. Premier Khrushchev cynically complained that his scientists went away the hand and the device was working out slightly more powerful that the foreseen. The device detonated on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, around 90000 Km2, in Europa’s extreme North-East, in the Arctic Ocean. Immediately after the event, ABC Daily published a front page, where they were turning out to be superposed on our Spain, the impacts of 5 of these insanity devices. We returned to the Middle Age, without capital means or productive infrastructures.
The Trends for the Wars of the XXth and XXIst centuries.
Till now, the wars were making between big and small «nations». They were the only capable of generating a «will of defense». This .made concrete in the Armed Forces and in the economy, the diplomacy and the people support of their societies. Looking for the defense of their strategic and national interests and their survival. A procedure or protocol existed for the war declaration and for the signature of the peace agreement. The one that was not respecting the honor procedure was considered to be infamous. And if he was turning out to be defeated, could wait for a severe punishment. President Roosevelt, on Monday, the 8th of December, 1941, at 12:30 pm. hour of Washington, in his speech before the American Congress assembled in Joint Session, and transmitted by radio to the nation, was declaring: «Yesterday was a day marked by the infamy…I request you declare the existence of a State of War between the United States of America and Germany, Italy, the Japanese Empire and all their Allies». And ultimately were Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The contemporary wars lasted a few years. After which, exhausted the industrial capacity and the will of defense of the defeated nations, not necessarily invaded or occupied, these were accepting their defeat and the peace was signed. When the armistice or the peace conditions were too leonine and humiliating, they were originating new vital defense «impulses or take-offs» in the defeated people. Seeking to overcome and avenge the received damages and offenses. Those were the sure germ of a future war within a generation, measured in around 25 years. Just remember the treaty of Versailles or «Diktat» against Germany, signed on June 29, 1919, promoted by Georges Clemenceau, called the Tiger. Whose last payments referred to interests of the already liquidated principal debt, the reunified Germany has just done at the end of September, 2010, approximately 90 years after accepted.
The threat of the use of the atomic weapon in the war between the industrial powers, removed indefinitely the historical and recurrent danger of a war of interests of any class between them. The civil and military leaders of all of them, have exhibited throughout more than 65 years an exquisite tact, supported by the nationals diplomacy and economy, in the international relations and in the resolution of the raised conflicts. No «minor» relative question was deserving to assume the risk of an uncertain, costly nuclear warfare and without clear «victors». In any case, the big hegemonic powers or the principal ones in a strategic zone, were solving regionally his ideological and of interests fighting. And they were doing it by means of regionally limited sectoral wars. Where were fighting their partners and like-minded, local, not atomic and subsidiary nations, even out of their strategic natural zone. There we have the case of Angola, Cuba and South Africa, after the decolonization of the first one. Also the fight in the Horn of Africa between Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Ethiopia, Cuba and Siad Barre’s Somalia. The latter’s overthrow, after his defeat in the war for getting the Ogaden Desert in 1991, precipitated Somalia in the chaos in which still is. And we have the Israel and the Arabic bordering countries case, which threaten her from time to time with her elimination and with throwing to the sea the surviving Jews.
The International Politics alters the initial Status Quo.
But the unstoppable proliferation of the atomic weapon between nations of cultures and idiosyncrasies very different from those of the big industrial original nations, can present a new, serious and complex problem. The nuclear threat is so radical and dangerous, that already now the «confidence» does not turn out to be sufficient in the rationality, the goodness and the good perform of all the world leaders, for its exposition and launch. The weapon systems to use will determine if the wars will be or not total. And it is necessary to apply real and practical limitations to those, which guarantee the rights of the Humanity in her survival and peace.
Let’s remember, in addition, that nobody grants the personal and collective human rights. It neither gains them nor obtains any group, supposedly anticipated and activist. They are inherent in the human nature and in all those who take part of her. What can do the political and religious collectivities is to recognize them or not and to defend them or not.
The mentioned systems include the defense systems against the military conventional vectors of the nuclear weapons: ballistic and selfguided rockets and aircraft and several types of ships. But a suicidal group can be also the vector of an atomic weapon of several hundreds of kilotons. That introduces it in an enemy urban center (city, barrack, industrial center). Any rascal power, even as part of a delirious strategy, can facilitate this type of devices to radical anti Western groups, which do not lack economic resources. This would connect intimately the types of contemporary wars.
Nowadays, the Islamic radicals are those who use with profusion and diffusion the suicides. Candidates to use this type of “arm of use and throw», do not lack to any group. And even a certain market exists between the radical Islamic groups, to punctually be facilitated «voluntaries». In the last years, the followers of the Sunna are who are using the suicide in the Islamic Yihad. It is used by al-Qaida, the Afghanistan’s Taliban of the mulhas Omar and Haqqani and the Tehkrit-e-Taliban Pakistan, the members of Hamas and the Pakistani separatists in the Indian Kashmir, accused of the assault to Bombay. The shiies of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran do not habitually use it. Though in the assault against the barracks of the western forces in Beirut in October, 1983, which was the presentation in society of Hezbollah, the drivers of the trucks, full of explosives, thrown against those, were suicidal. Also, the Iranians used their basijs militias in frontal massive assaults against the fixed reinforced positions, supported by mine fields, of the Iraqis, during the war from 1981 to 1989. The basijs were «popular militias» of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Without organization, method, discipline, resources or too much military instruction. But they were full of religious and patriotic anxieties. They were the last to come to the Khomeini revolution. And they had to demonstrate their fervor and militancy for her. In the Iranian cities they had turned into a rebellious problem for the clerical shii authorities. That canalized his redeeming impulse towards the lay enemy front. The militias were authentic, dispensable «cannon fodders».
(continuará)