Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!apple!amdahl!amdcad!military
From: welty@lewis.crd.ge.com
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: infrared and interceptors
Message-ID: <26689@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 10 Aug 89 04:08:39 GMT
Sender: cdr@amdcad.AMD.COM
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Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com



From: welty@lewis.crd.ge.com (Richard Welty)

From: Mary Shafer 
=From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)

=>(Oh, okay, a brief comment on why that happened...  Escort fighters are
=>less necessary now that bombers attack individually rather than in
=>formation -- a response to nuclear antiaircraft weapons, among other
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
=>things -- and are less practical over intercontinental ranges.

=Are "nuclear anitaircraft weapons" antiaircraft weapons that use
=nuclear devices or are they antiaircraft weapons used against aircraft
=carrying nuclear devices?

the latter

=Did I miss some strange and wonderful weapon system? 

they got obsoleted before our time; but there were a few nuclear
tipped AAMs; my recollection is that there was an F-101 variant
specialized to carry such a missle (perhaps named ``Genie''?)

=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.

this was rather before people comprehended the consequences of
EMP.

=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.

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

right; this was not a rational weapon system, which was part
of why it was abandoned.  too bad they ever built it in the
first place, but at least they figured it out.  of course, it
would have hurt the Canadians more than the US, anyway (no
smiley here -- this was the typical US ``it's only tundra
and eskimoes anyway'' mentality in action.

richard
-- 
richard welty    518-387-6346, GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York
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