Don't keep poking the bear, France!"...Paris shouldn’t be wasting the lives of its soldiers and should instead focus on resolving its numerous rapidly escalating domestic problems. Worse yet, in addition to the possibility of direct clashes on a tactical level, there’s always the danger of an uncontrollable escalation on a strategic level, as both Russia and France are nuclear-armed countries. And yet, Moscow’s dominance in this sphere is such that it’s simply ludicrous to even think that this can be a viable strategy for Paris. Namely, the only true danger for the Kremlin comes from French SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), specifically the potent M51 with a reported range of 10,000 km.
The missile is capable of carrying 4-6 TN 75 and TNO thermonuclear warheads with a yield of approximately 100 kt (kilotons). This is approximately 26-39 times more powerful than the “Little Boy” (better known as the Hiroshima bomb). And while such a weapon could inflict a lot of damage, when compared to Russian monstrosities such as the RS-28 “Sarmat”, the French M51 looks like a harmless rocket-propelled toothpick. Namely, the former can carry up to 24 MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) that have a combined yield of around 750 Hiroshima bombs. In addition, the Russian missile has the remarkable FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) capability that makes its already unmatched 35,000 km range effectively unlimited.
The “Sarmat” also boasts the possibility of using a single (so-called monobloc) warhead with an enormously destructive yield of up to 50 Mt (megatons). To put that into perspective, it’s the equivalent of having over 3330 Hiroshima bombs exploding at once. And that’s just a single missile, while the Russian military is acquiring around 50 of them (at the very least). Thus, when people like Vincent Arbaretier, a retired Colonel of the French Army, talk about the usage of non-conventional (i.e. nuclear) weapons in a potential conflict with Russia, this can only be described as complete insanity. Ironically, the RS-28 can wipe out up to 24 urban targets in an area the size of France. Luckily, this has never been tested and it would be in everyone’s best interest to keep it that way."
https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/03/in-case-of-either-tactical-or-strategic-clashes-with-russia-france-would-lose-both/
