What's the difference between a strategic and tactical weapon?

Answer 1

Strategic weapons are meant to render the enemy incapable of making war, i.e. General Curtis LeMay and his Strategic Air Command, designed to wipe out the Russians before they could wipe us out.

Tactical weapons would be used on a small scale, i.e. lets use a smart bomb to destroy a terrorist safe house.

Answer 2

Tactics involves fighting on the battlefield.

Strategy involves the grand plan of the war.

Getting over the next hill is Tactics.

Dedicing if you want to invade France or North Africa is Strategy.

So a tacitcal weapon is one you would use on the battlefield, that directly hits the enemy.

A strategic weapon is one you use on a strategic mission... often these involve hitting either economic targets (oil fields, ports, pipelines, factories) that will deny the enemy access to particular resources, or key facilites that will mess up the enemy's ability to make war against you.

An A-10 is a tactial air support air craft because it supports troops on the ground. It blows up tanks, so that's tactics.

A B-52 or a B-1 would be a strategic bomber because it would hit strategic targets... like a particular bridge or an airfield deep in the eneny territory, or a communications site. It would blow up tank factories, so that is strategy.

Many weapons can be used in either a strategic or a tactical role. A submarine would normally be a strategic weapon because its job is to destroy the enemy merchant fleet, (sinking tankers so the enemy has less oil, blockading a country so its' economy fails and the people starve). If it directly engaged an enemy warship though, (like sinking an aircraft carrier) then it would be a tactical weapon.

In terms of nuclear weapons bombs smaller than 20 kilotons are often refered to as Tactical Nuclear Weapons because you could use them to blow up large enemy units. (Hiroshima was about 30 kilotons, so we are still talking a big bomb here).

Atomic weapons larger than about 20kt would be strategic nuclear weapons because they are designed to toast entire cities.

Answer 3

A tactical weapon is used on the battlefield to knock out targets that will be used against you very soon or have the potential to be.

A strategic weapon is used from great distance to knock out infrastructure or weapons that will be used against you in the mid to long term.

For example a tactical nuke is small and has a range of 100 miles or so and a strategic nuke is big and intercontinental.

Answer 4

The very short Answer.

Strategic weapons don't move. They are em-placed as contingency.

Tactical weapons are very mobile and are deployable with RD units

Answer 5

size

Answer 6

One kills people, the other kills people