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From: daly@strawber.princeton.edu (John Daly)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Sonic booms as a weapon?
Message-ID: <1991Feb7.014919.2999@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 7 Feb 91 01:49:19 GMT
References: <1991Feb6.032858.22494@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (CFD)
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From: daly@strawber.princeton.edu (John Daly)

|> From: Bruce_Dunn@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dunn)
|> 
|>      What might the feasibility be of using aircraft to fly at very low
|> altitude and supersonic speed over enemy troops in trenches.  Would the sonic
|> boom from a fighter be powerful enough to cause injuries and/or equipment
|> damage.  At the very least, repeated flights at night in the days preceeding a
|> battle would interrupt the sleep of the entrenched troops.

Yes, you can kill people this way.  Project Pluto, a formerly classified DOE
program, was basically a nuclear powered cruise missile that flew at tree-top
level at speeds ranging from Mach 3 to 5.  Reports indicate that if the shock
wave didn't kill you, the radiation from it 50(?)MW nuclear reactor would.  It
was cancelled though because no one could figure out how to test it.  (There
was a plan to tether it to a post and let it fly circles around Nevada.)

I think the problem is that we really don't have craft designed to fly at the
altitudes and speeds required for that type of mission.  Even if we did, we
could probably find something better for them to do, since you would have to
fly directly over the target to have full effect.  But, talk about at terror
weapon!