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Comment by phaus | Hacker News Reader

They lost me at this:

>Force pilots were allowed to fire their nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down Soviet bombers heading toward the United States.

Nuclear anti-aircraft rockets?

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During the Cold War there were nuclear anti-aircraft missiles, nuclear anti-missile missiles, nuclear depth charges, nuclear artillery shells, nuclear torpedos, nuclear man-portable demolition charges, even nuclear recoilless guns:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device...

Crazy times....

The Davy Crockett makes a pretty good rebuttal to the "nuclear suitcase bombs are impossible" people. That would easily fit in a large suitcase.

No need to wonder - you can see a picture of the man-portable Mk-54 SADM here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munit...

Mind you, it's a pretty big thing to carry, but one man could carry it.

Its not the size, its the weight. Imagine a 50 kilogram suitcase.

I've taken a 100 pound suitcase to Australia. Had to pay an additional fee to United Airlines, but with wheels it's no problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munit... says the W54 was half that weight, 50 pounds (22.6 kg).

Well, "nuclear suitcase bombs" are usually envisioned as taking out a city. Wheel one into Times Square, push the button, and boom, millions dead. The Davy Crockett's yield was about 20 tons, so it would be like a really big truck bomb going off. Not a good thing to happen in a crowded city, but we're talking about a couple of city blocks being destroyed. For a sneak attack, you'd probably be better off buying or stealing a tractor trailer and loading it to the gills with ammonium nitrate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munit... says the yield could be up to a kiloton. That's about 400x the Oklahoma City bomb. It wouldn't destroy a city, but letting that off in Manhattan is going to ruin a lot of peoples' days.

>During the Cold War there were nuclear anti-aircraft missiles, nuclear anti-missile missiles...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon

I guess it wasn't the author's fault, but that's the one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. Until about 1990, anti-aircraft missiles were horribly inaccurate. I read somewhere that the chance of scoring a hit with a korean-war era air-to-air missile was about 5%. Why would anyone want to launch a nuclear missile that's pretty much guaranteed to not his its target?

Because you don't really need to "hit" the target.

> I read somewhere that the chance of scoring a hit with a korean-war era air-to-air missile was about 5%. Why would anyone want to launch a nuclear missile that's pretty much guaranteed to not his its target?

Because with a nuclear air-to-air missile in its intended role, you don't need to "hit the target", you just need to detonate somewhere in the general area of the bomber formation that you are trying to whittle down.

I should have kept reading the entire article, I hadn't noticed that it used a proximity trigger. That makes more sense.

It's the other way around. If you're sure to get a hit, you don't need a nuke. But if you don't have very much accuracy, you can make up for it with a big blast radius.

If you can hit your target with sufficient energy, you don't even need an explosive.

Think of it as an air-to-air hand-grenade.

I used to work on the AIR-2A. It a was a thing of simplicity. Any airplane within a mile that survived had to land immediately. This is before modern guidance systems. The military imagined masses of bombers with fighter cover attacking similar to WW II. Perhaps its a bit of fighting the last war, but it was a simple, effective answer to a real threat.

> Until about 1990, anti-aircraft missiles were horribly inaccurate.

That's precisely the point. It's a bit like arming a SWAT team with tank rounds in their guns. Accuracy matters a lot less.

Correct. The Genie anti-aircraft nuclear weapon had no guidance system, and was therefore a rocket, not a missile.

I was kind of in surprise at the wording too, I didn't believe they would use a nuclear anti aircraft weapon, it seemed overkill, and then I read the rationale of the genie. I'm surprised to say the least.

Hardly overkill, when you consider these weapons were designed for use against squadrons of nuclear-armed Soviet bombers, and the abysmal performance of fighters and interceptors against bomber squadrons during World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nuclear_anti-aircraft_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike

Anti-aircraft missiles with optional nuclear warheads. Basically, the idea was to nuke their nuclear bombers.

Project Nike... Somehow, "Just Do It" doesn't strike me as a reassuring slogan to associate to nuclear weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_%28mythology%29

AR-2 Genie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie

In the early days of guided missiles, having a kill radius of a mile or so rather than a few hundred feet had quite the appeal.

Make up for accuracy with power. It doesn't mater if your missile can only make it within a mile of the target if it destroys every aircraft within a mile when it detonates.

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