There's some pretty interesting rational behind the creation of those kinds of munition (including the "nuclear rifle") but their argument seems to boil down to 2 things:
1, at the time where the USSR and the Western European states were still living with a divided germany US assessments found that the number of troops we could collectively muster were vastly less than the current standing european force of the USSR. People were very worried there wouldn't be much we could do if a land invasion overran the troops other than immediately retaliate with a full nuclear strike against soviet cities. These were though of as a weird middle ground
2. The Army was getting worried it would be cut out of money and relevance as more and more focus was moved to the Air Force because most weapons at the time were delivered by planes under the control of the strategic air command. They became ever more worried later as submarine launched missiles gave more nuclear firepower to the navy. Afraid they'd be totally left out the Army started requesting hundreds of thousands of "tactical" weapons like nuclear landmines, nuclear man launched missiles, nuclear artillery shells etc.
There's some pretty interesting rational behind the creation of those kinds of munition (including the "nuclear rifle") but their argument seems to boil down to 2 things: 1, at the time where the USSR and the Western European states were still living with a divided germany US assessments found that the number of troops we could collectively muster were vastly less than the current standing european force of the USSR. People were very worried there wouldn't be much we could do if a land invasion overran the troops other than immediately retaliate with a full nuclear strike against soviet cities. These were though of as a weird middle ground
2. The Army was getting worried it would be cut out of money and relevance as more and more focus was moved to the Air Force because most weapons at the time were delivered by planes under the control of the strategic air command. They became ever more worried later as submarine launched missiles gave more nuclear firepower to the navy. Afraid they'd be totally left out the Army started requesting hundreds of thousands of "tactical" weapons like nuclear landmines, nuclear man launched missiles, nuclear artillery shells etc.