Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!apple!amdahl!amdcad!military
From: OCONNORDM@CRDGW2.crd.ge.com (Dennis O'Connor)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Nuclear Anti-aircraft Weapons
Message-ID: <26691@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 10 Aug 89 04:08:50 GMT
Sender: cdr@amdcad.AMD.COM
Lines: 34
Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com



From: OCONNORDM@CRDGW2.crd.ge.com (Dennis O'Connor)
[First person to use the new address!]

Nuclear Aint-Aircraft weapons have been studied, I don't know
if any are in use. I believe one of the Nike series of
ground-to-air missiles was nuclear-capable.

"First use" of such a weapon against an incoming wave
of (presumably) nuclear-armed bombers, once the bombers
are over your territory, isn't really "first use", I'd say.
The bombers are.

EMP is probably not an issue : my understanding is that
EMP is only produced by a stratospheric detonation, not
by a tropospheric one. So detonating a nuke at say 40K feet
shouldn't be a problem.

Beats me what type of nuke you'd want. A "regular" heat-and-blast
warhead would work fine, unless it used over your own territory,
in which case, it would probably have some "serious detrimental
side effects". An enhanced-radiation weapon, maybe X-ray to
disrupt the avioncs?, might be a better choice. But then again,
given that your own ground forces are probably buttoned-up in
a heavily-armoured tank or APC, maybe a clean "regular" nuke
would do fine. And there's very little fall-out from air bursts.

IF I were the Russians, maybe a bunch of crude ground-based 
sight-and-sound spotting stations, and a few Nuclear SAMs,
would seem just the ticket for low-cost anti-B2 defense.
Certainly, the West could no longer COUNT on the B-2 penetrating.

Dennis O'Connor			OCONNORDM@CRD.GE.COM