An originally classified 1984 US interagency intelligence assessment states that in both the preceding 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet and US military were already following the "existing trends" in warhead miniaturization, of higher accuracy and lower yield nuclear warheads. This is seen when assessing the most numerous physics packages in the US arsenal, which in the 1960s were the B28 and W31, however, both quickly became less prominent with the 1970s mass production runs of the 50 Kt W68, the 100 Kt W76 and in the 1980s, with the B61. This trend towards miniaturization, enabled by advances in inertial guidance and accurate GPS navigation etc., was motivated by a multitude of factors, namely the desire to leverage the physics of equivalent megatonnage that miniaturization offered; of freeing up space to fit more MIRV warheads and decoys on each missile. Alongside the desire to still destroy hardened targets but while reducing the severity of fallout collateral damage depositing on neighboring, and potentially friendly, countries. As it relates to the likelihood of nuclear winter, the range of potential thermal radiation ignited fires was already reduced with miniaturization. For example, the most popular nuclear winter paper, the 1983 TTAPS paper, had described a 3000 Mt counterforce attack on ICBM sites with each individual warhead having approximately one Mt of energy; however not long after publication, Michael Altfeld of Michigan State University and political scientist Stephen Cimbala of Pennsylvania State University argued that the then already developed and deployed smaller, more accurate warheads (e.g. W76), together with lower detonation heights, could produce the same counterforce strike with a total of only 3 Mt of energy being expended. They continue that, if the nuclear winter models prove to be representative of reality, then far less climatic-cooling would occur, even if firestorm prone areas existed in the target list, as lower fusing heights such as surface bursts would also limit the range of the burning thermal rays due to terrain masking and shadows cast by buildings, while also temporarily lofting far more localized fallout when compared to airburst fuzing – the standard mode of employment against un-hardened targets.thumb|left|The 1951 Shot Uncle of Operation Buster-Jangle, had a yield about a tenth of the 13 to 16 Kt Hiroshima bomb, 1.2 Kt,Some sources refer to the test as Jangle Uncle (e.g., Adushkin, 2001) or Project Windstorm (e.g., DOE/NV-526, 1998). Operation Buster and Operation Jangle were initially conceived as separate operations, and Jangle was at first known as Windstorm, but the AEC merged the plans into a single operation on 19 June 1951. See Gladeck, 1986. and was detonated 5.2 m (17 ft) beneath ground level. No thermal flash of heat energy was emitted to the surroundings in this shallow buried test. The explosion resulted in a cloud that rose to 3.5 km (11,500 ft). The resulting crater was 260 feet (79 m) wide and 53 feet (16 m) deep. The yield is similar to that of an Atomic Demolition Munition. Altfeld and Cimbala argue that true belief in nuclear winter might lead nations towards building greater arsenals of weapons of this type. However, despite being complicated due to the advent of Dial-a-yield technology, data on these low yield nuclear weapons suggests that they, as of 2012, make up about a tenth of the arsenal of the US and Russia, and the fraction of the stockpile that they occupy has diminished since the 1970–1990s, not grown. A factor in this is that very thin devices with yields of approximately one kiloton of energy are nuclear weapons that make very inefficient use of their nuclear materials, e.g. two-point implosion. Thus a more psychologically detering higher efficiency/higher yield device, can instead be constructed from the same mass of fissile material. This logic is similarly reflected in the originally classified 1984 Interagency Intelligence assessment, which suggests that targeting planners would simply have to consider target combustibility along with yield, height of burst, timing and other factors to reduce the amount of smoke to safeguard against the potentiality of a nuclear winter. Therefore, as a consequence of attempting to limit the target fire hazard by reducing the range of thermal radiation with fuzing for surface and sub-surface bursts, this will result in a scenario where the far more concentrated, and therefore deadlier, local fallout that is generated following a surface burst forms, as opposed to the comparatively dilute global fallout created when nuclear weapons are fuzed in air burst mode.
An originally classified 1984 US interagency intelligence assessment states that in both the preceding 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet and US military were already following the "existing trends" in warhead miniaturization, of higher accuracy and lower yield nuclear warheads. This is seen when assessing the most numerous physics packages in the US arsenal, which in the 1960s were the B28 and W31, however, both quickly became less prominent with the 1970s mass production runs of the 50 Kt W68, the 100 Kt W76 and in the 1980s, with the B61. This trend towards miniaturization, enabled by advances in inertial guidance and accurate GPS navigation etc., was motivated by a multitude of factors, namely the desire to leverage the physics of equivalent megatonnage that miniaturization offered; of freeing up space to fit more MIRV warheads and decoys on each missile. Alongside the desire to still destroy hardened targets but while reducing the severity of fallout collateral damage depositing on neighboring, and potentially friendly, countries. As it relates to the likelihood of nuclear winter, the range of potential thermal radiation ignited fires was already reduced with miniaturization. For example, the most popular nuclear winter paper, the 1983 TTAPS paper, had described a 3000 Mt counterforce attack on ICBM sites with each individual warhead having approximately one Mt of energy; however not long after publication, Michael Altfeld of Michigan State University and political scientist Stephen Cimbala of Pennsylvania State University argued that the then already developed and deployed smaller, more accurate warheads (e.g. W76), together with lower detonation heights could produce the same counterforce strike with a total of only 3 Mt of energy being expended. They continue that, if the nuclear winter models prove to be representative of reality, then far less climatic-cooling would occur, even if firestorm prone areas existed in the target list, as lower fusing heights such as surface bursts would also limit the range of the burning thermal rays due to terrain masking and shadows cast by buildings, while also temporarily lofting far more localized fallout when compared to airburst fuzing – the standard mode of employment against un-hardened targets.thumb|left|The 1951 Shot Uncle of Operation Buster-Jangle, had a yield about a tenth of the 13 to 16 Kt Hiroshima bomb, 1.2 Kt,Some sources refer to the test as Jangle Uncle (e.g., Adushkin, 2001) or Project Windstorm (e.g., DOE/NV-526, 1998). Operation Buster and Operation Jangle were initially conceived as separate operations, and Jangle was at first known as Windstorm, but the AEC merged the plans into a single operation on 19 June 1951. See Gladeck, 1986. and was detonated 5.2 m (17 ft) beneath ground level. No thermal flash of heat energy was emitted to the surroundings in this shallow buried test. The explosion resulted in a cloud that rose to 3.5 km (11,500 ft). The resulting crater was 260 feet (79 m) wide and 53 feet (16 m) deep. The yield is similar to that of an Atomic Demolition Munition. Altfeld and Cimbala argue that true belief in nuclear winter might lead nations towards building greater arsenals of weapons of this type. However, despite being complicated due to the advent of Dial-a-yield technology, data on these low yield nuclear weapons suggests that they, as of 2012, make up about a tenth of the arsenal of the US and Russia, and the fraction of the stockpile that they occupy has diminished since the 1970–1990s, not grown. A factor in this is that very thin devices with yields of approximately one kiloton of energy are nuclear weapons that make very inefficient use of their nuclear materials, e.g. two-point implosion. Thus a more psychologically detering higher efficiency/higher yield device, can instead be constructed from the same mass of fissile material. This logic is similarly reflected in the originally classified 1984 Interagency Intelligence assessment, which suggests that targeting planners would simply have to consider target combustibility along with yield, height of burst, timing and other factors to reduce the amount of smoke to s,afeguard against the potentiality of a nuclear winter. Therefore, as a consequence of attempting to limit the target fire hazard by reducing the range of thermal radiation with fuzing for surface and sub-surface bursts, this will result in a scenario where the far more concentrated, and therefore deadlier, local fallout that is generated following a surface burst forms, as opposed to the comparatively dilute global fallout created when nuclear weapons are fuzed in air burst mode.