The Computer computed continuously updated the Predicted Intercept point and its altitude on the Electronic Plotting Boards right up to the second before firing. That knowledge guided our choice among 2 nuclear yields or a high-explosive warhead. It was not our job to kill our defended assets for the enemy.
I was a Nike Hercules Fire Control Crewman. The intent was to have the Nike's nuclear blast at a point, time and yield of our choosing rather than let Ivan drop his megaton ordnance on his chosen target with maximum destruction and fallout as his goal. Pure airbursts are fairly benign and vaporization of the enemy warheads was the best outcome since they were believed to have Dead Man fuses which would detonate the weapons if the aircraft was shot down. This was very undesireable.
During Vietnam, I was an operator/technician on a Nike Ajax system, at an electronics warfare range in Forida. It came complete with vacuum tubes. It took some time to fire the system up. We'd acquire the "enemy" plane, then track it. The information was for reference to a computer, which was also tied to a Russian TWS radar. This fired virtual missiles. We learned to keep lock, even with chaff dropped or jamming occurred. The pilots were training against enemy electronic warfare.
Sort of a naive claim to make that shooting down nuclear equipped bombers with nuclear AA missiles is "safe". I guess fallout is better than being atomized...
The Computer computed continuously updated the Predicted Intercept point and its altitude on the Electronic Plotting Boards right up to the second before firing. That knowledge guided our choice among 2 nuclear yields or a high-explosive warhead. It was not our job to kill our defended assets for the enemy.
ypdave01 2 months ago
I was a Nike Hercules Fire Control Crewman. The intent was to have the Nike's nuclear blast at a point, time and yield of our choosing rather than let Ivan drop his megaton ordnance on his chosen target with maximum destruction and fallout as his goal. Pure airbursts are fairly benign and vaporization of the enemy warheads was the best outcome since they were believed to have Dead Man fuses which would detonate the weapons if the aircraft was shot down. This was very undesireable.
ypdave01 2 months ago
@Ganiscol I believe the US did the best they could to protect us with the knowledge available at that time.
FylthyBeest 7 months ago 2
During Vietnam, I was an operator/technician on a Nike Ajax system, at an electronics warfare range in Forida. It came complete with vacuum tubes. It took some time to fire the system up. We'd acquire the "enemy" plane, then track it. The information was for reference to a computer, which was also tied to a Russian TWS radar. This fired virtual missiles. We learned to keep lock, even with chaff dropped or jamming occurred. The pilots were training against enemy electronic warfare.
soco13466 1 year ago
Sort of a naive claim to make that shooting down nuclear equipped bombers with nuclear AA missiles is "safe". I guess fallout is better than being atomized...
Ganiscol 1 year ago