Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?

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.

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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.

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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"...

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Re:Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia? by Symmetry on Monday December 04, 2017 @07:43PM (#15848895)

Not 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

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Re:Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia? by Bartweiss on Monday December 04, 2017 @05:55PM (#15848343)

Yeah, probably not the sort of thing you go and do to stop a 5-kiloton conventional warhead.

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