January 7, 2005 :: Inside Defense :: News
The January 6 edition of Inside the Pentagon cites sources reporting that the Army Space and Missile Defense Command is revising a draft request for proposals which had originally expressed interest in nuclear-tipped interceptors for the purpose of ballistic missile defense. Inside Defense reports that defense officials have already removed the language. The language apparently referred to both possible directed energy and small nuclear warheads, but it was congressional opposition to the latter which apparently prompted the removal.
One might object to the use of nuclear tipped interceptors on the grounds that they are not necessary, and that effective technologies are possible with hit to kill, kinetic interceptors. In the absence of energetic support for even that program, however, nuclear tipped interceptors are certainly plausible as a last resort. Both Soviet-Russian missile defenses around Moscow and the short-lived U.S. missile interceptors based at Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1975, employed small (or, in the case of Russia, large) nuclear warheads which would obliterate any incoming missiles or warheads, regardless of any countermeasures. A nuclear explosion in space is not desirable, but it is better than one taking place on the ground.
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