Did the Vietnam War involve nuclear weapons?

While no nuclear weapons were deployed in Vietnam, they were on board aircraft carriers and stockpiled in the region, increasing in numbers up through mid-1967. [22] CINCPAC plans for a major escalation of the war included both nuclear and nonnuclear options.

Can US use nuclear weapons?

Although the United States does not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons, the absence of a “no first use” pledge is less about the perceived need to employ these weapons first in a conflict than it is about the view that the threat of nuclear escalation continues to serve as a deterrent to large-scale conventional …

What bombs did they use in the Vietnam War?

List of bombs

Mk-81.
CBU-55.
Mk-77.
Mk-82. The Mk-82.
Mk-82 HDGP.
Mk-82 500 LB Bomb.
Mk-83.
Mk-84. The Mk-84.

Why did the US use nuclear bombs in Vietnam?

Such weapons, the JASONs noted, were just the sort of military forces the U.S. deployed to Vietnam in large bases and ports and large troop concentrations. If weapons comparable to the Honest John battlefield missile or the Davy Crockett nuclear bazooka made it into Viet Cong hands the results would have been catastrophic.

When did the US start using nuclear weapons?

By February 1966, frustration with the U.S. bombing campaign against North Vietnam rose high enough to spur talk of going nuclear. Throughout the Vietnam War, such talk was mostly just that, but in 1966, it worried certain people enough to gin up a classified study of tactical nuclear weapons use in Southeast Asia.

What was the nuclear taboo in the Vietnam War?

This paper, “Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War,” is a chapter from Nina Tannenwald’s forthcoming book The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Nonuse of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (from Cambridge University Press).

Why did the US not use the atomic bomb in the Korean War?

Atomic weapons surely would have helped, although potentially at the cost of permanently delegitimizing the Seoul government (which would have invited the nuclear destruction of its own homeland). Recent work on the Korean War has revealed other reasons why the United States resisted using the atomic bomb.