Future Roles of U.S. Nuclear Forces; Implications for U.S. Strategy

xxiv, 128 pages. Acronyms. Footnotes. Tables. Figures. References. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Corner of page 33/34 creased. Glenn Buchan was the Associate Program Director for C3I/Space systems in Project AIR FORCE. He joined RAND as a research staff member in the Defense Planning and Analysis Department in 1984. His research has spanned a wide range of defense topics. In the area of strategic and nuclear planning, he has constructed war plans and evaluated force interactions, studied arms control verification issues and implications of various weapon systems on arms control, and analyzed Soviet strategy. His research has also focused on nuclear and conventional uses of heavy bombers. He led a major RAND study on the future structure of the U.S. heavy bomber force, focusing heavily on a range of potential applications for the B-2 bomber. The United States has been reexamining its basic assumptions about foreign policy and various instruments of national security policy to define its future needs. The defining characteristic of nuclear weapons makes them unmatched as terror weapons and potentially more effective than any other type of weapon in strictly military terms (i.e., destroying targets). Moreover, the ability to produce nuclear weapons with relatively large yields in very small packages can dramatically increase their potential military value. Accordingly, nuclear weapons offer a range of strategic and tactical advantages to those countries that possess them. They can be used as instruments to ? coerce enemies by threat or actual use ? deter enemies from a range of actions by threat of punishment ? offset an imbalance of conventional forces ? fight a large-scale war ? destroy specific critical installations ? enhance national prestige and win a "place at the table" in the international arena. The United States has used its nuclear forces for most of those purposes.…