Quote:
Originally Posted by vic-vic
The problem is that while buried nuclear bomb can destroy entire wave of BETAs, until you destroy the hive BETA easilly can send another dozen of thousands of creatures in the attack. And then again and again...
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But conventional defenses suffer the exact same problem.
To clarify, I wouldn't advocate a pure thermonuclear stragety, which probably wouldn't even world. However, I would say that humanity is at too much of a disadvantage for battlefield atomics not to be a standard portion of large-scale operational doctrine, under the right conditions.
In this case, the best use would probably be to use short-range, high-speed cruise missiles carrying 500 kt to one-megaton warheads for mutually-reinforcing detonation patterns against large concentrations attacking the Oder-Neisse Line.
The kilotonage is high enough to use bombs with a fusion fraction above 95% for minimal fallout while retaining easy supersonic delivery, and the semi-encirclement pattern reinforces the effects of the IR/thermal flash effects of the bombs while allowing them to be detonated somewhat closer to your own fortifications without danger (because each bomb effects a smaller radius, but more of them are used for the necessary coverage).
As an example of how this might work, a nuclear attack might be immediately preceded by the ripple-firing of a huge number of rocket artillery pieces to saturate and occupy the laser batteries. Some rockets would fire HE/ICM rounds to pose a crediable threat, others would fire rockets loaded with active junk electronics to make them look tastier to BETA tenchno-sensing.
At the same time, the cruise missiles would be ground-launched with booster rockets from positions below line of sight of the probable laser locations, allowing them to get up to speed. Once they cross the line, the RL Moskit missile has a speed of Mach 3, so it would only take twelve or so seconds for it to get to the safe airburst position ten-plus kilometers away (though with properly built forts, much closer detonations would likely be safe).
There would be a number of dummy rockets, all loaded with more scrap electronics that are much more 'advanced' than the actual warheads, serving to minimize the chance of an actual interception.