Russia's Next Tank - Nuclear?

Will Russia's Next Tank Fire Radioactive Nuclear Shells?

If true, it's a very bad idea.

Getty Sasha Mordovets
 
By Kyle Mizokami

Russia's next-generation tank may become nuclear capable. That's according to The Diplomat, citing unconfirmed Russian media sources. A nuclear tank shell would be the ultimate anti-tank missile, capable of destroying dozens of tanks at once.

During the 1960s the proliferation of battlefield nuclear weapons saw them placed across all levels of the armed forces. Weapons such as the Davy Crockett recoilless nuclear weapon were issued at the battalion level to counter massed Soviet tank attacks. While this scattered American battlefield nukes, making them difficult to destroy, it also placed more nukes in more hands, which is not necessarily a good thing. Battlefield nuclear weapons were withdrawn from frontline service with all countries after the end of the Cold War but still exist in guarded depots.

According to the article, the maker of the T-14 Armata, Uralvagonzavod, plans to upgun the Armata with a new 2A83 152 millimeter gun and also to develop a tactical nuclear shell for the gun. The gun upgrade has been a stated goal for years now, but a nuclear shell is a new and dangerous development.

The explosive yield of the shell is unknown, but it would have to be small enough to not threaten friendly forces. The current Armata tank gun, the 2A82 125 millimeter gun, has a maximum effective range of 4.3 miles. The larger 152 millimeter gun would have a longer range—say, up to five miles. To be useful without destroying friendly forces, such a nuclear round would probably be "sub-kiloton" in explosive yield, or equivalent to less than one thousand tons of TNT. (The Hiroshima bomb, for reference, was 15,000 to 18,000 tons.)

Let's use a 500-ton weapon as an example. A 500-ton-yield nuclear shell would create a fireball 400 feet wide and damage tanks and armed vehicles another 1,100 feet in all directions. Personnel exposed to the blast would receive third degree burns at distances of up 1,300 feet, and at 2,400 feet, 50 to 90 percent would receive lethal levels of radiation.

This is a bad idea for several reasons. For one, it would make armies more likely to use battlefield nuclear weapons, which could easily escalate to all-out nuclear warfare. Second, unless safety practices are put in place such as withholding arming codes until the last possible moment, tank gun nukes could be used without authorization. That may not be practical, as the speed of an enemy attack may render waiting for permission to use the nuclear rounds impossible. And if the tank carrying these weapons suffers catastrophic damage—that is, it blows up—the explosion could release a plume of deadly radioactive plutonium that would contaminate the battlefield, and friendly forces.

Is there any truth the reports? Russia has plenty of tactical nuclear weapons and it seems unlikely that it would bother to develop an entirely new one. That having been said, there are no technical obstacles to a nuclear tank round. It's not an impossible idea. Just a bad one.