3 ms·
Yea, the US arsenal downsized the weapons in keeping with the tonnage restrictions in the various arms reduction agreements. However, they compensated by increa
by tehjoker 5y ago
Yea, the US arsenal downsized the weapons in keeping with the tonnage restrictions in the various arms reduction agreements. However, they compensated by increasing the accuracy of the weapons so that fewer bombs per target will be needed, increasing the hard kill power of the arsenal without violating the agreements.
This is important because "in theory" no one is allowed to explicitly target civilians, which don't require much accuracy, per the laws of war. Military targets are often in reinforced concrete or buried and so require a precise high pressure hit to crack. In practice, aiming points are chosen of military targets that are quite close to civilians.
- masklinn 5y agoAlso because a single large blast wastes a lot of energy, and is easier to intercept. You’ll do way more damage way more reliably with 20 1MT warheads than with a single 20MT bomb. But it required reliable ballistic missiles and M(I)RV. If your delivery mechanism is bombers, then at equiv-tech you have to account for high attrition rates, and thus need large payloads to ensure even low success rates will do the necessary damage to the target.