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This doesn't work well for ballistic missiles. A few ounces of shrapnel doesn't knock the missile very far from it's trajectory. You'd have to get lucky to br
by olympus 9y ago
This doesn't work well for ballistic missiles. A few ounces of shrapnel doesn't knock the missile very far from it's trajectory. You'd have to get lucky to break the fuse, and even then you'd have a big hunk of explosives heading toward the target and making a big crater. Plus a lot of old missiles have such simple fusing systems that you probably won't break them with just a bit of shrapnel anyway.
- Bartweiss 9y agoAs I understand it, the only serious "explode the interceptor" proposal was to use nuclear interceptors against ICBMs. That provides a modest radius of non-projectile destruction, and more importantly provides a large radius of fuse/control-disrupting radiation. So when it comes to "shooting down a Scud near the ground over a city", you're exactly right. Blowing up your interceptor only works when you've got a high-tech target and are willing to make quite a mess yourself to stop the thing.
- blattimwind 9y agoWell detonating nuclear warheads (literally) near some important asset of yours is probably always some kind of last ditch effort.
- bigiain 9y agoI did a tour of the Nike missile site in the Marin Headlands / Golden Gate Park once. They were very careful to "neither confirm nor deny" whether the site ever had nuclear payloads, but they _did_ make a point to tell everyone that the beautiful mechanical targeting computers had Sacramento programmed in as a target, "just in case"...
- Bartweiss 9y agoYeah, probably not the sort of thing you go and do to stop a 5-kiloton conventional warhead.
- Symmetry 9y agoNot necessarily, it would be going off pretty high. Much higher than in this video with people directly underneath. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlE1BdOAfVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlE1BdOAfVc