In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" writes:
In message ,
Bill Shatzer writes
On Sun, 7 Sep 2003, Charles Talleyrand wrote:
Imagine four your favorite combat aircraft of 1963 going up
against four modern F/A-18s in a BVR engagement. Suppose
that the 1963
pilots were smart and willing to employ the best tactics
available. Even so we suppose the F-18s win almost every
engagement.
Basically, how does the combat go?

Launch the nuclear-tipped Genies at maximum range.

"Close" is good enough.

Trouble is, the Hornets may manage to deny the enemy a radar lock (what
ECM did they bring?) and the Genies may never get fired.

Even if they do... that's a _big_ smoke trail and the fighters are going
to evade it. And the Genie's kill radius is not that large. Then F-102s
with Falcons (unreliable and inaccurate) mix it up with Hornets armed
with late-model Sidewinders and AMRAAMs.

An AIR-2's kill radius was about 1500' (450m). Time of FLight was
typically figured to be 5 seconds. Hornet or no, there's not a whole
lot of jinking that's going to get you clear of a Genie's kill zone.
There's no guidance, you can't jam it, and it's time fuzed, rather
than proximity fuzed. I wouldn't count it out. It was, in fact, also
possible to aim & fire the thing without radar.

The "can't jink" part was really what the Genie was all about. Well,
that & the No Proximity Fuze thing - missile fuzes weren't all that
good in the 1950s. Oh, yeah, and the Nuke Killer bit. Salvage Fuzing
isn't an issue if you zap teh bomb as well as the bomber.


If air-to-air tacnukes worked really well, they'd still be around. They
didn't, so they aren't.

There really isn't much need for them nowadays. The End of the World
will now be delivered by Ballistic Missile, and missile fuzes adn
maneuverability have improved tremendously. Well, all that and the
idea that setting A-Bombs off over your own country to save it doesn't
sound very bright. You also have to mount specia lguards for them,
have special paperwork for them, and using them at all becomes a
National Leadership Decision sort of thing.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster