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In the late 1950s, a group of ingenious but misguided Americans began development of a nightmarish missile system: The Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile, or SLAM. It also came to be known as “The Flying Crowbar” due to the missile’s low complexity and high durability.
The missile was intended to use a very simple nuclear ramjet engine… outside air would be forced into a duct on the front using ram pressure, and then this air would become superheated by a nuclear reactor inside the missile. The heated air would expand rapidly, pushing the exhaust out of the rear to provide enough thrust to reach three times the speed of sound. The theory was workable, but the design had the unfortunate tendency to rain radioactive fission fragments everywhere it went, which is a lot of ground considering that this was a low-altitude long-range weapon.
The weapon’s design called for a complement of hydrogen bombs inside, which could be peppered upon targets while the missile zig-zagged over the general area. As an added bonus, any enemies which were not killed by the nukes were likely to die from the passing missile’s shockwave, or by exposure to the gamma and neutron radiation belched out by its unshielded nuclear reactor.
The full story of this charming and delightful weapon was written for Air & Space Magazine in 1990, and it’s a fascinating read.
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First post!
This reminds me of one of the early anti-missile missiles. If I’m not mistaken, it was called the Nike Ajax. It was a nuclear missile that was supposed to detonate in front of enemy nuclear missiles. Sounds yummy, eh? I think that a trivial detail like EMPs forced them to scrap the design.
Did an article here at DI really go without a comment up until now?!
Dustin Barbour said: “Did an article here at DI really go without a comment up until now?!”
I don’t think so. I remember reading this about two months ago and there was a good amount of comments and jokes about the “raining radioactive debris” bits.
Another article just posted (that was a rerun) also seemed to be missing some (but not all) comments that others had posted follow ups too.
Perhaps part of this stint of writers block on the site is also to address a possible technical problem with the feedback database?
were all gonna die 1 day from a nuke no ice age no gamma ray no robots(maybe robots maybe) well i am cause im 12 u adults had 2 make nukes better i know u didnt design my gramps did but u made it better (or worse 4 me) so im screwed and ull be laughin in ur grave
Just goes to show that for all the people trying to preserve life, there’s just as many idiots trying to destroy it.
Enter your reply text here. OK
You guys all worry to much. Every generation says “this is gonna kill us.” This anexity has occured problobly for human history. Every generation saying “it’s much worse now.”
Still, what the hell do we need to have this nuclear missle for? If it prevents another WWII it will do it’s job.
I recently went to the Air Museum at Travis AFB, and saw up-close a rocket that looks an awful lot like the picture in this article. Fortunately, it wasn’t warm to the touch, and I didn’t see stars when I closed my eyes. FYI, the museum has 2 items of interest to children under the age of 10. On the plus side, it’s free.