Quote:
Originally Posted by Retired_for_now
And a little something to defend Jellystone against those "bear" bombers being discussed over on the Aviation Section.
Attachment 47837
Nike-Zeus was an early anti-ballistic missile developed from the Nike series of surface-to-air missiles (SAM). Defense in the 1950s was still thinking in terms of the 1000-plane raids of World War II and turned to nuclear tipped SAMs. The idea was to lob a nuke (5-40 kiloton dial-a-bomb) into the middle of the enemy formation and blast them all at once (and seriously singe whatever was underneath). Eventually, someone realized you wouldn't use large formations to deliver nukes - one plane to a city (or maybe send two if you really cared). The only formations were cells of a few aircraft that closed up for mutual support to penetrate defense belts, then dispersed to individual targets.
The Nike-Zeus was developed in the early 1960s specifically to intercept ballistic missile warheads. It was extensively tested and demonstrated the capability to close to within 200 feet of an incoming re-entry vehicle (a fact not stressed by critics of current anti-ballistic missile systems). With a 400 kiloton warhead (well over 20 times the yield of the nukes used on Japan to end WWII) 200 feet was a definite hit - and we actually set the damn things off during live fire tests back then ...
Sized to fire off from the 1/2 inch stomp rocket launcher.
Yogi (poking bear with stick not recommended ...)
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O.M.G....
we'd better fly good 'n' high Yogi... Great work you're doing here as is the norm for you my friend
