"The Pentagon Planned to Nuke the Sky" Topic

"These days, lasers are the new hotness if you want your military to be on the cutting edge of air and missile defense. But during the Cold War, America looked to another then-cutting edge technology to keep the skies clean of enemies.

Hard as it may be to fathom now, the U.S. Army built and deployed nuclear-tipped Nike Hercules air defense missiles to dozens of sites across the U.S. and abroad. In the event that the Cold War ever turned hot, America would nuke the skies above to prevent the Soviets from nuking the ground below.

By the end of World War II, the U.S. military was beginning to realize that traditional anti-aircraft artillery just wasn't going to cut it. The jet age had begun to reshape military aviation — and these planes could fly higher and faster than the guns could reach…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

After regular service I went into the reserves and there was an ex Nike Hercules site at Fort Sheridan just North of Chicago. We looked into using the launcher site to store the vans we used to store our computers (23 Data Processing Unit) but it was 2 feet too low and our vans wouldn't fit. I parked my car about 5 feet away from where one of the launch sites was.

Actually nuclear armed anti aircraft missiles are not that bad of an idea for the times as the aircraft had to go over the target to drop their bombs and this was the last line of defense after the fighter intercepts. After the development of ICBMs and stand off weapons for the bombers it became somewhat useless.

Look up the AIR-2 Genie and its planned use.

I grew up with a Nike base right behind our farmland. No doubt about the nukes and no question as to were we too close to it to matter if the Cold War turned hot.

I saw several sites around Chicago including one AAA site a few blocks from our apartment. Scary times.

Nuclear AA, nuclear depth charges, even nuclear land mines in Germany. Anything was fair game.

Nuking the air is a good way of generating EMP to knock out enemy comms systems as a precursor to a strike.

Closest I ever got to live nuclear weapons was Blue Strike slung off the bottom of the Vulcans which used to fly low (couple of hundred feet) over the house back in the 60s, although I've also been fairly close to Polaris sub warheads when they used to drive them up from Burghfield to Faslane:)

YouTube link

There was a B61 outside of my office at Sandia National Lab. No one could remember why it was there. The speculation was it was undergoing aging tests. I thought it was unusual and unique but the other labs had the same thing. One of them had one in a hallway which must have been inconvenient.

We are much better without them. They were useful in their time, however.

'Scuse Me, while I Nuke this Guy!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Have a cousin who was a Sgt. on a mobile launch battery in Germany back in the 70s. He came back to the states on leave one summer and stopped over in the northeast on his way home in the south. We had just gotten back from a vacation to the New Jersey shore where I won a "Danger: Radiation" sign on the boardwalk. I had it hanging on my bedroom door. He took one look at it and said "Oh, great! They're following me home."

That explains the movie Damnation Alley.