"John" wrote:
35 knots (let's be generous) and half an hour means a ship or convoy could
get 32410m away from the target point. This gives an area of
3,299,954,370m2. UK trident-II missiles can 8 475kT warheads which will
start fires at 9km, meaning they'll make the fuel onboard a carrier explode
within an area of 254,469,005m2.

ROTFLMAO. Theres considerable more energy required to burst tanks in
the bottom of a steel ship than there is to start an urban area on
fire. (On top of which modern combatants are designed to withstand
considerable overpressure.)

So you need a total of 12 warheads (or two missiles) to kill the convoy. This
assumes the US has perfect reaction times, and can instantly guess the
arget at the moment of launch, which it can't.

This assumes that you can determine the position, course, and speed of
the convoy accurately (no navigation error in your sensor), get the
information back within a reasonable timeframe (without getting killed
when you radiate) and fire your missiles with a sufficiently low CEP
(1 mile)... And even then it's unlikely you'll actually sink a ship.

As I said, nuclear buckshot will kill most things.

Thats the wet dream of most armchair admirals. The reality is quite
different.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.