Jeez, this guy sounds like that thing killed his whole family at least.
Butthurt lefties are getting more pathetic than ever.
when you think about the potential it had as a cheap landscaping tool, energy generator, mineral extractor, before the total hazards of radiation were known, by the people developing it initially, the engineers might be upset too.
probably felt alot like they were robbed (maybe they saw possibilities of cleaner bombs) by the government, cut funding, while its good enough to use as a weapon..
When the back patting stops and the smoke clears, all those 'geniuses' did was put power into the hands of psychos paying them peanuts
Rest assured all that stock is still around somewhere, dusted off, updated, and used as leverage to influence 'decisions'
Why waste money building new gear when the old stuff still gets it done ?
the body count of nuclear weapons is pretty low compared to conventional weapons and tanks etc.
If they keep staying unused its great, but no need to make small hard to manage ones. Thats why treaties like START are good, because they keep design of this shit down. Otherwise they would be trying to make slimmer faster missiles all the time that can get past missile defenses.
Things could change if they make big fast mobile armies (imagine like mechwarrior or way too many tanks), then they would try to keep costs down by making orbital weapons that are fast and dangerous, tactical weapons deployed near satellite photos of big army concentrations around borders, etc.
I think the fact that we can still get away with using old ones means that politicians are doing a good job keeping military proliferation down/reasonable.
I think fast ships, things that can cross terrain fast and actually do more occupation then a helicopter (flying tanks), possibly mechs, etc.. could lead to a restart of development , because then it will be very appealing to leave some davey crockett thing laying around some hidden forward outpost in case like 50 tank things show up at a moments notice from a few hundred miles away.
Then if space is less safe, the army will trust it less, and feel the need to have rapid deployment stuff to prevent good fortifications from being made (if the enemy is can setup a good defensive position with a invasion force, they will have problems). I think right now they can basically figure out troop movements with satellites and put a counter force in the correct location most of the time, that can fight conventionally, otherwise they need force multipliers. So watch out if someone makes a flying T-14. I think alot of the reasoning behind the tactical weapons in europe was basically to prevent soviets from getting too much stuff in one place too quickly when air superiority was not had. I think thats why they spend so much money on air superiority. I imagine they would setup some kind of "kursk" defense in enemy territory if they had enough stuff that would be impenetrable, making strategic use of weapons necessary, because there probably exist locations that can be fortified to extreme levels if there is enough equipment moved there quickly. I imagine thats what the nuclear demolitions charges were partially meant for, they could figure out where some of these strongpoints would be and leave them mined, or to blow them up before hand to make it unappealing to use and direct them to places where they think they can get away with using planes etc (reduce effect of anti air cover, direct them into mountains where helicopters can hide from line of sight, etc)
I can imagine things would get a bit like Albania without the tactical weapons potentially. They wasted like 25% of their economy on building bunkers everywhere. Hopefully we can find a way not to need them again