Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ginosko!ctrsol!sdsu!usc!polyslo!decwrl!amdcad!military
From: well!nagle@lll-crg.llnl.gov (John Nagle)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: infrared and interceptors
Message-ID: <26727@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 12 Aug 89 07:36:36 GMT
References: <8893@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com



From: well!nagle@lll-crg.llnl.gov (John Nagle)

In article <8893@cbnews.ATT.COM> shafer@drynix (Mary Shafer) writes:
>Are "nuclear anitaircraft weapons" antiaircraft weapons that use
>nuclear devices or are they antiaircraft weapons used against aircraft
>carrying nuclear devices?
>
>Did I miss some strange and wonderful weapon system? 
>
      Yes, the Nike-Hercules, installed around U.S. cities in the period
1960-1970.  Liquid-fueled, ground-controlled anti-aircraft missiles,
sometimes equipped with low-yield nuclear warheads.

>Using a nuclear device to shoot down an aircraft sounds like a really
>bad idea.  Consider the EMP effect on your own systems, for one thing.

      That was less of a problem with the computers of that era.  Many
were still tube-based.  EMP is a controllable problem, if the equipment
is designed and shielded for it.  Things like metal mesh in the concrete
of your building make a big difference.  

>Also, it's hard to be the first user of a nuclear device, even as a
>preemptive event.  These would be tactical weapons and I can't imagine
>that control would be surrendered to the field, which would be
>necessary if such a weapons were to be successful.

      That's right.  There were U.S. air defense commanders in the 1960s
with nuclear release authority.  If somebody is about to drop a few
planeloads of 20 megatonners on your city, using a few 1 kiloton interceptors
to knock them down seems like a good tradeoff.

>Of course, practicality, feasibility, and useability are not
>necessarily among the criteria used to select weapon systems.  :-)

      Sometimes you have to make tough decisions like that.  It may be 
better to kill off 1% of the population of a city to save 80%.  By
the time somebody has to make a decision like that, the options left are
limited.

					John Nagle