The Chap

Fission or fusion devices will never be any more obsolete than a knife. They may well be superceded in terms of destructive power (pray to whichever god) but will always have their place. They kill people. Anything that does so will be as eternally usful as the bunched fist. Unfortunately.

I cannot buy stock in "a good right hander".

A few brief comments on anti-matter:

It can be stored. The do-dahs are either a Paul or Penning trap. Density distinguishes the two.

Anti-matter is incredibly expensive. So would petrol be if some chain smoker had to suck it out of the ground using a bendy straw.

The (for example) positrons created at Cern are not the specifacally designated aim of the facility. Hence, the piss-pooor efficiency and thus cost.

A dedicated device i.e. a Heavy ion collider (most likely a lineac) can produce the stuff economically.

As OoE astutely mentioned, los will soon be beam dominated. Indirect fire will, I risk, always be kinetic..

For the interested/baffled etc. I recommended some lit. in old posts somewhere.

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Where's the bloody gin? An army marches on its liver, not its ruddy stomach.

AntiSatellite

The missile defence shield is a multi billion dollar joke that only works about 50% of the time - and that is during staged defence tests
the only defence that really worked was MAD (Mutual assured destruction)


The defence shield could never protect the United States of America from a full scale nuclear war, American and Soviet technology would easily turn any of the world's cities into a radioactive crater no matter what kind of shield the propaganda media were pusing. The new 'Son of Starwars' program is being pushed by Washington because it might stop a few scud missiles or IRBMs from a rogue nation that is trying nuclear blackmail.


The only nuclear defence was MAD and it might have kept the sane communist leaders of Russia or China in check, however MAD (Mutual assured destruction) may have very little meaning to the Jihadists and Ayatollah's who might be keen on sticking an kind of warhead on top of their scuds.