> On Mar 14, 2016, at 8:35 PM, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:
>
>
> That seems extremely unlikely, since there are really only two types
> of missiles that make much sense: those that kill by kinetic impact,
> and those that kill by nuclear detonation.

well, at Traveller TL’s you can probably build a multistage kinetic penetrator with a  nuclear warhead  ‘shipkiller’. It’s not going to be the dinky sidewinder-sized ones that civvies are allowed.

I’m thinking a sizeable missile with lots of G’s, a ‘prewarhead’ of something like an explosively-formed penetrator to cut through the main armor skin, then the rest of the missile just crashes through the hole, and when it stops, the nuke goes off . Boom.

Or TNE/Honor Harrington-style nuke-pumped laser warheads. All the missile has to do is get within a few hundred light-ms away from the ship, within 10K-100K km, lock on and ‘fire’.

> The first won't blow up at
> all (or at least no more than any other stored energy bank), and the
> second almost certainly require precisely created conditions to blow
> up, and furthermore seem to be forbidden in Traveller.

They’re forbidden for private ownership; the IN certainly has ‘em.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs