alt Hacker NewsThey 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.)
My first comment in this thread was a response to your, "In most cases in war, the objective is to take ground, and making the ground [uninhabitable] is counter productive" (and the context was nukes in general, not tactical nukes).
Anyway, tactical nukes don't make the ground uninhabitable any more than strategic nukes do.