wb9omc@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick) (08/31/90)
From: wb9omc@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick) >>From: jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky) > >Several postings to this newsgroup have asserted that there is "no doubt" that >cruise missiles could be "quite literally flown through the kitchen window" >(or, more to the point of the question that started all this, through the >window of some foreign head of state whom we wished to assassinate). >I request that the people who made this claim please cite *tests* that show >that the claimed performance has in fact been demonstrated. There is a big I don't know about kitchen windows, but I saw film of a test done some years ago (this was DOD stuff) in which a cruise missile was fired from (I think...it has been awhile) a hundred or so miles off, arrived smack over the top of its target (an aircraft in a sandbag enclosure), exploded and set the airplane very much on fire and damaged it just from the close proximity of the blast. In this particular case, one would need an accuracy of plus or minus 15 or so feet, I'd guess, to achieve the goal of mangling the airplane. Given enough of a bang in the way of a warhead, isn't that more than enough for *most* things you'd send a cruise missile against? I say *most* because a seriously hardened target could require a very direct hit. I suppose one could say it might not make too much difference if the cruiser flew in through the kitchen window of YOUR house, or the bedroom window about 15 feet away - the results would be pretty much the same. :-) Duane