Given the fact that shooting down a satellite will be a much greater challenge than shooting down an aircraft because of the broad range between the launch of the missile and the speed of the moving target-I am somewhat suprised that the missile isnt armed with a small nuclear warhead. The advantage of using a tiny nuclear warhead(no more than 5KT)would be that the satellite would pretty much be vaporized and there'd be no debree to worry about.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the fact that shooting down a satellite will be a much greater challenge than shooting down an aircraft because of the broad range between the launch of the missile and the speed of the moving target-I am somewhat suprised that the missile isnt armed with a small nuclear warhead. The advantage of using a tiny nuclear warhead(no more than 5KT)would be that the satellite would pretty much be vaporized and there'd be no debree to worry about.