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If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not s

If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area. So, short of force fields and teleportation, there is no defence. The Americans knew this when they were developing the technology in the 50's/60's, and axed the project in the interest of not encouraging the Soviets to make the same unstoppable doomsday weapon.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area. It's a lot worse to have the on-target thermonuclear detonation at the end, so, no, it's not “pretty much as bad” to shoot it down. It's still bad, sure, but it's a huge difference in how bad. But, yes, it does reduce the utility of missile defense, and is exactly the kind of thing that opponents of Bush’s decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty were worried about encouraging.
mikeash 9y ago
Shooting one down over your territory would suck, but it would suck about a million times less than having a hydrogen bomb detonate over a city. Nowhere near “pretty much as bad.”
- madaxe_again 9y ago
  Well, if it renders areas uninhabitable, leaves infrastructure intact but radioactive, and kills the population - apart from the physical destruction bit, the effects are just as bad. It's not the big explosions that are a problem in nuclear war - it's the fallout.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > It's not the big explosions that are a problem in nuclear war No, I'm pretty sure those are definitely a problem. > it's the fallout. That's also a problem, but a thermonuclear ground burst is going to produce several orders of magnitude more fallout than a nuclear ramjet.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Fallout is bad, but not “a couple million people fried in an instant” bad. It would suck to have a large area contaminated, and hundreds or thousands of people might die, but that’s still way better.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
> If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area. So obviously the only reasonable solution is to develop a system to shoot it down way before it gets near you. To say that such a system can't be developed in the future is not short-sightedness or a lack of imagination, but simply propaganda.
- madaxe_again 9y ago
  Unless it's launched by a submarine on your doorstep, which would be the strategically intelligent thing to do. Same line of reasoning that led to the development of SLBMs.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    No, even in that case, though there the “system to shoot it down” consists of ASW supremacy and a policy of preemption if tensions escalate to the point where a launch seems plausible; the less valuable post-launch defense is against a weapon system, the more it encourages preemptive attack.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area. It's a lot worse to have the on-target thermonuclear detonation at the end, so, no, it's not “pretty much as bad” to shoot it down. It's still bad, sure, but it's a huge difference in how bad. But, yes, it does reduce the utility of missile defense, and is exactly the kind of thing that opponents of Bush’s decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty were worried about encouraging.

mikeash 9y ago

Shooting one down over your territory would suck, but it would suck about a million times less than having a hydrogen bomb detonate over a city. Nowhere near “pretty much as bad.”

madaxe_again 9y ago
Well, if it renders areas uninhabitable, leaves infrastructure intact but radioactive, and kills the population - apart from the physical destruction bit, the effects are just as bad. It's not the big explosions that are a problem in nuclear war - it's the fallout.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > It's not the big explosions that are a problem in nuclear war No, I'm pretty sure those are definitely a problem. > it's the fallout. That's also a problem, but a thermonuclear ground burst is going to produce several orders of magnitude more fallout than a nuclear ramjet.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Fallout is bad, but not “a couple million people fried in an instant” bad. It would suck to have a large area contaminated, and hundreds or thousands of people might die, but that’s still way better.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

> If it's a nuclear ramjet SLAM, while you could in principle shoot it down, if it's anywhere near your territory when you do so, it's pretty much as bad as not shooting it down, as both result in radioactivity spread over a large area. So obviously the only reasonable solution is to develop a system to shoot it down way before it gets near you. To say that such a system can't be developed in the future is not short-sightedness or a lack of imagination, but simply propaganda.

madaxe_again 9y ago
Unless it's launched by a submarine on your doorstep, which would be the strategically intelligent thing to do. Same line of reasoning that led to the development of SLBMs.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  No, even in that case, though there the “system to shoot it down” consists of ASW supremacy and a policy of preemption if tensions escalate to the point where a launch seems plausible; the less valuable post-launch defense is against a weapon system, the more it encourages preemptive attack.