Re:Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?
by olympus on Monday December 04, 2017 @10:45AM
(#15844688)
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.
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Re:Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?
by Bartweiss on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:42PM
(#15845738)
As 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.
Re:Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?
by blattimwind on Monday December 04, 2017 @05:00PM
(#15847970)
Well detonating nuclear warheads (literally) near some important asset of yours is probably always some kind of last ditch effort.
Re:Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?
by bigiain on Monday December 04, 2017 @05:54PM
(#15848337)
I 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"...