Ok, then tell me where the battlefield usage is for thermonuclear weapons. Or more importantly, tell the world's military planners, because I'm mostly parroting them when they (a) say they don't see one and (b) visibly don't plan for one.
The Soviets had a war plan which was shown to Western historians during the thaw of the 1990s in which they nuke hundreds of military installations in the NATO countries except for Britain and France (to reduce the probability of retaliatory nuclear strikes from those 2 countries) as the opening move of an invasion to grab the Western part of the European plain. If I remember correctly, the plan was to send in the tanks only hours or days after the nuclear attack, relying on the fact that the armor of the tank would be adequate shielding against fallout (although I'm sure the plan included an effort to map where the plumes of heavy fallout ended up and mostly avoiding sending even tanks into those areas).
Also, NATO famously included nukes in most of their plans for defending against such an invasion. In fact, the US invented, built, tested and stockpiled a type of nuke (namely, the neutron bomb) specialized for taking out tanks (although none of these neutron bombs were moved to Europe as far as I can tell). Tanks are mostly immune to attack by ordinary nukes: to take out a group of tanks with a nuke, you need to configure the nuke to burst on the ground, and ground bursts don't cover enough area to be a practical way to take out enough of the Soviet Union's tanks in a full-scale invasion of NATO.
They planned all kinds of crazy things in the cold war. Most of them have been phased out, except for attacking military installations which I count as a strategic usage. (And per the surrounding discussion, very much a live possibility, so it doesn't count as evidence of abandoning tech due to the inherent horror. I got distracted but my main point is, these things stay in the toolbox or not entirely on pragmatic grounds.)
Ok, then tell me where the battlefield usage is for thermonuclear weapons. Or more importantly, tell the world's military planners, because I'm mostly parroting them when they (a) say they don't see one and (b) visibly don't plan for one.
The Soviets had a war plan which was shown to Western historians during the thaw of the 1990s in which they nuke hundreds of military installations in the NATO countries except for Britain and France (to reduce the probability of retaliatory nuclear strikes from those 2 countries) as the opening move of an invasion to grab the Western part of the European plain. If I remember correctly, the plan was to send in the tanks only hours or days after the nuclear attack, relying on the fact that the armor of the tank would be adequate shielding against fallout (although I'm sure the plan included an effort to map where the plumes of heavy fallout ended up and mostly avoiding sending even tanks into those areas).
Also, NATO famously included nukes in most of their plans for defending against such an invasion. In fact, the US invented, built, tested and stockpiled a type of nuke (namely, the neutron bomb) specialized for taking out tanks (although none of these neutron bombs were moved to Europe as far as I can tell). Tanks are mostly immune to attack by ordinary nukes: to take out a group of tanks with a nuke, you need to configure the nuke to burst on the ground, and ground bursts don't cover enough area to be a practical way to take out enough of the Soviet Union's tanks in a full-scale invasion of NATO.
They planned all kinds of crazy things in the cold war. Most of them have been phased out, except for attacking military installations which I count as a strategic usage. (And per the surrounding discussion, very much a live possibility, so it doesn't count as evidence of abandoning tech due to the inherent horror. I got distracted but my main point is, these things stay in the toolbox or not entirely on pragmatic grounds.)
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