Nuke tipped SAMs

Neutron Flux, as was said before. Setting off carried/incoming nuclear warheads, causing them to fizzle, frying non-hardened parts of electric/electronic systems. Blast effect at high altitude not so much.

The soviets I understand had a lot of nuclear tipped SAMs on their warships

How were they more effective ( in theory atleast) from non-nuclear tipped SAMs ?

Neutron flux, thermal pulse and air blast. They can go many hundred meters farther than any conventional SAM warhead explosion can be.

Since some soviet SAMs on naval ships were dual purpose could the nuke tipped be used in ASuW role as well ? Same goes for nuke tipped ASW missiles like SSN-14 SIlex can they be used as ASuW weapons ?

@ CRJ: Mr. Lee’s pages – interesting angle on things! Thanks for the link.

Very true. Disassembled in the 1970s because of the ABM treaty preventing the use of a battle management, made it an easy target for ICBMs and SLBMs, to clear the way for the bombers, the continued cost was unjustifiable. The Russians evidently didn’t agree with that strategy.

http://nikemissile.org/
http://alpha.fdu.edu/~bender/N-view.html
http://nikemissile.org/IFC/nike_hercules.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-14_Nike-Hercules
http://ed-thelen.org/

Nuke Tipped SAM’s

The Americans had Nuke tipped surface to air missiles as well.

I think they were called Nike Hercules, or something similar, a very large 2-stage delta winged missile.

I’m sure some one out there can confirm, or correct me.

Cabbage

Naval SAMs did have nuclear warheads on US warships for the majority of the Cold War, I believe right up to the end of it. I assume the Soviets had many of the same reasons for putting nuclear warheads on their naval SAMs, if that is true that they had them (link?), and this is the first I have read of it.

The Tolos and Terrier were both nuclear armed. RIM-2D was the nuclear version of the Terrier, and like all US anti aircraft weapons on ships it probably also had a surface to surface capability. That covers a lot of potential targets and capabilities, out to the horizon anyway, (two opposing ships armed with nuclear tipped SAMs would make a quick naval battle, like whoever shoots first wins, which I imagine might have been the fate of the usual Soviet trailing warship traveling in and observing the US battle group when the shooting was about to start), but the advertised purpose was for use against groups of incoming aircraft (or missiles) in order to protect a carrier battle group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-2_Terrier

William T. Lee also wrote a great book on the subject of nuclear tipped SAMs and the Soviet Sam network in particular. http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1996_h/h960927l.htm
The premise of his work was that nuclear SAMs by their nature were capable of being ABMs if only they were connected to a central ‘battle management’ network, which is hard to detect with spy satellites. He believed the Soviets were attempting to make a national ABM network with nuclear tipped SA-5s and SA-10s.

Who knows, but it is a fascinating book.

^ so they were practical and had some usefulness ?
what about against low flying planes ? The range of the SAM had to be quite significant, I imagine.The SA-5 and SA-2 were most commonly used for this ?

Not familiar with warship nuclear SAMs, but land based units had em. The big ones at least, S-75, S-300, S-300V, etc.

In terms of effectiveness, dodging elderly S-75s became a suicidal proposition. 😮