More accurate warheads also means smaller warheads. The goal of the warhead is to take out the intended target. If you can't do that with precision, you brute force it raw power. As they say: "There's only 'close' with horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons".
But even that's not true. The hardened targets are designed to be hardened against the capability of the potential attacker, that whole arms race thing.
We dropped vast tonnage of dumb bombs in WWII simply because we had to contend with a) getting the bombers through in the first place, and b) ensuring the designated target was effectively damaged.
Replace a fleet of B-17s with a B-2 and some precision munitions, and you get a net win of effectiveness.
Same with nuclear weapons. When you can miss by a country mile, you need a warhead sized so that it doesn't really matter. Better precision in guidance and fuzing is a "good" thing.
The dark side, smaller weapons, potentially, are "more usable" with "fewer side affects" (which is also a "good" and "bad" thing).
But even that's not true. The hardened targets are designed to be hardened against the capability of the potential attacker, that whole arms race thing.
We dropped vast tonnage of dumb bombs in WWII simply because we had to contend with a) getting the bombers through in the first place, and b) ensuring the designated target was effectively damaged.
Replace a fleet of B-17s with a B-2 and some precision munitions, and you get a net win of effectiveness.
Same with nuclear weapons. When you can miss by a country mile, you need a warhead sized so that it doesn't really matter. Better precision in guidance and fuzing is a "good" thing.
The dark side, smaller weapons, potentially, are "more usable" with "fewer side affects" (which is also a "good" and "bad" thing).