'Man, missions didn't get more serious than that'

摘要

The decision to employ nuclear weapons as a first reaction to a Warsaw Pact invasion of western Europe was endorsed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a strategy document published in August 1949. This policy of 'massive retaliation' dictated that, in the event of the Soviet Union or its allies initiating an attack on any of the NATO member countries, it would be met by an immediate nuclear response. NATO accepted not the possibility that nuclear weapons might be used as a first response, but the certainty that they would. Up to this time, the mission of nuclear attack had been the sole responsibility of US Air Force Strategic Air Command. It was a role SAC was reluctant to relinquish, but when the US government decided to proceed with the development of tactical nuclear weapons which would, in the air force's case, be delivered by fighter-bomber aircraft, the involvement of Tactical Air Command (TAC) was assured. Accepting the philosophy of tactical nuclear strike led immediately to development of the necessary weapons. Thus was born the first of them, the Mk7 atomic bomb, to be carried at that time by the Republic F-84G Thunderjet. Other platforms would follow.