Talk:Nuclear weapon

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Need verification on anti-ship missiles having fission explosions. Doesn't sound right. May need to either re-name page, or move anti-ship missiles to a separate page.

Good add re the laser fusion anti-ship missiles - I'm surprised it doesn't give a precise yield for the Alliance missile - is the kiloton to gigaton yield from the data book too? Vympel 08:58, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I haven't edited the whole page. There isn't as far as I know any use of nuclear fission missiles. They are only mentioned to explain their mechanism and how use of them is now taboo. I just added the laser fusion missile section. It doesn't give a precise yield I suppose because the section like the rest of the stuff from the Data Book is written as if from a public publication so presumably precise performance data would be classified. Kiloton scale is all it says which is incredibly vague since that can range from 1 kiloton to hundreds of kilotons. Perhaps the Imperial missiles against Westerland were gigaton scale? The dimensions of the missile are actually from the FFC, but the mention of yield scale is from the Data Book in yet another example of how the information is scattered everywhere. In the section about missile guidance there is mention of a large anti-ship missile called ALRASM-1 though it is unknown whether it is the "standard" Alliance anti-ship missile or just a missile mentioned because it was noteworthy for its guidance system. What it stands for is also unknown, but my personal speculative guess would be All-purpose Long Range Anti-Ship Missile. However nuclear missiles are not the only kinds of missiles. There is mention of conventional fragmentation warheads or directed blast fragmentation warheads. These are probably more along the lines of what is fired from things like Imperial destroyers. Iracundus 09:18, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Its probably a worthwhile exercise to scale the Brunhild's missile tubes (i.e. the nuclear fusion missile launchers) to those of the destroyer and see if there's any difference - that said, directed blast or just a conventional warhead (but a big one ...) seems like a dead ringer for the missiles the Wahlen Fleet uses on Earth, since they're clearly not nuclear. Westerland is an interesting case, in that there's clearly some tactical scale nuclear warheads (there's a small town getting smacked with one) and a seemingly *huge* explosion that appears to be above cloud cover - guess the nobles probably used a range of warhead yields, depending on what they were targeting. Vympel 09:32, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The nuclear fusion missile fired from the Brunhild matches the visual look of the swarm of missiles in episode 15 fired against the 13th Fleet. Notable characteristics are the 4 extended fins and 4 bulges alongside the main body like boosters. In contrast, if you look at the Imperial destroyer missile launches in episode 97, they are straight cylinders. Now of course that by itself doesn't rule out them having nuclear warheads, but at the very least it shows they are not the exact same type and the fact it took 2 of them to take out an Imperial battleship suggests their destructive power is lower. Iracundus 10:01, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Good point, I had forgotten about that. Vympel 10:21, 27 October 2011 (UTC)