Tactical nuclear weapons (TNW), sometimes called non-strategic or "battlefield" nuclear weapons, are designed for use against military targets in a theater of operations rather than against an adversary's homeland infrastructure or cities. They typically have lower explosive yields than strategic warheads — often well under 100 kilotons, and sometimes under one kiloton — and are delivered by shorter-range systems such as artillery shells, gravity bombs, short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, or depth charges.
There is no universally agreed legal or technical definition of TNW. The distinction is usually drawn by range, yield, mission, or delivery platform, but these criteria overlap. A low-yield warhead on a strategic submarine, for example, blurs the category. This ambiguity has direct arms-control consequences: TNW have largely fallen outside the major bilateral US–Russia treaty regime. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), extended in 2021, caps only deployed strategic warheads and delivery vehicles. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 eliminated an entire class of ground-launched missiles between 500 and 5,500 km, but the United States withdrew in 2019, citing Russian noncompliance.
Unilateral reductions came through the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives of 1991–1992, under which Presidents George H. W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin pledged to withdraw and partly dismantle large portions of their tactical arsenals. Implementation was never verified by treaty.
Today, key policy concerns include:
- NATO nuclear sharing, under which US B61 gravity bombs are forward-deployed in several European member states.
- Russia's substantially larger tactical stockpile and its 2023 announcement of deploying such weapons in Belarus.
- Programs such as the US W76-2 low-yield submarine warhead, fielded from 2019.
- Pakistan's short-range Nasr (Hatf-IX) system, developed in response to Indian conventional doctrine.
Analysts debate whether lower yields raise the risk of nuclear use by lowering the threshold, or whether they strengthen deterrence by making retaliation more credible.
Example
In March 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the first such deployment outside Russian territory since the Soviet era.