Could the US shoot down an India/Pakistani nuke?

Obviously, if one of them sends a nuke a missile, the US wouldn’t have the time (or ability – Damn, where’s Brilliant Pebbles
http://www.llnl.gov/timeline/80s.html
when you need it?) to do anything.

But suppose a bomber left one nation heading for the other.

a) would the US be able to shoot that plane down with a missile or a fighter jet?
b) If it did, would that set off the nuke and would that do a lot of damage?

No chance of the US interceting a ballistic missile. Even if we had the technology (which we currently don’t) India and Pakistan are so close that flight times would be very short making an intercept even more difficult.

If they are flying a bomber then the US could most certainly shoot it down. That would assume we had assets in the area that could chase it down but I think it’s safe to say that we currently have assets in the area so no problems there.

Nukes do not work like conventional explosives. You could take a sledgehammer to one and whack on it all day without setting it off. A nuke has to go through a very precise detonation process and a crashing plane would manage to set it off properly. Nukes do have conventional explosives in them however that are quite powerful in their own right. I suppose it is possible that those might detonate and spray nuclear material around a bit but all-in-all it wouldn’t be all that bad and certainly not as bad as the nuke going off.

Oops…

Make that:

“…a crashing plane would not manage to set it off properly.”

How much of a window of time would we have to intercept a bomber anyway?

I guess it all depends on where the bomber takes off from, what type of bomber (fighter/bomber or heavy bomber or basically fast vs. slow) what its destination is and where US forces are deployed at the time.

Islamabad is only around 450 miles from Delhi and Delhi is (at a very rough guess) 900 miles from the Arabian Sea where a US carrier might be so chances would be bad there. If the bomber is going for Kashmir from Islamabad (maybe 100 miles away) you could pretty much forget it unless US planes were already patroling directly over Kashmir. However, if the bomber leaving Pakistan were headed for (say) Bangalore the US would probably have an excellent chance at catching it (although frankly I couldn’t see Pakistan trying a strike that deep into India and the Indians themselves would likely catch it before it got that far).

(a) We could do short work of just about any of their aircraft… but that is only any good if the time-to-target between them and our nearest intercept assets is less than the time-to-target between them and their destination.

(b) The US and the Russians have had nukes on planes that crashed, nukes on missiles that caught fire, nukes sunk into the deep ocean, and nukes falling off planes at high altitude, w/o the nuke cooking off. As pointed out, this is because they are designed to not go off on impact or heat alone. What you’d worry about would be an uncontrolled cookoff of the conventional explosive trigger, making the nuke break open and spread radioactive material around the countryside.

If a nuke goes off in an aircraft intercept, it will have the effect of an airburst at whatever the altitude is. If it’s at high altitude, you’ll mostly kill other aircrews and fry a lot of electronics; if it’s at low altitude… well, both prior instances of use of nukes in war were low-altitude airbursts.

This is also assuming we had irrefutable intel that the plane in question was carrying a nuke with the intent of employing it. I doubt the CinC would ok the shootdown of an Indian fighter or bomber based on “We think….”

A Tomcat on the prowl with a loudout of Phoenix’s would be of help taking out a “bomber” from a distance away…

However, I am under the impression that their nukes are meant to be delivered via Missle anyhoo… so not that it would do any good.

Well, you might be able to intercept an ICBM…If, say, you had a fighter in the air near the launch site, and were able to hit the ICBM with an air to air missile during the ICBM’s first 30 seconds or so of launch. Or maybe just someone waiting near the launch platform with a Stinger or three. (Or four…or five…)

In fact, either bombing the launch site BEFORE the launch, or just sabotaging the ICBM somehow would probably be more effective.

Ranchoth

I agree with bernse. Musharraf made a big show of the missile tests over the past fortnight. Even if our Star Wars defense was in place and working, I understand that a missile has to go VERY HIGH before it can lock on. 100-450 miles? Why not just put the damn thing on a greyhound bus and drive it over. This is a very frightening time. I hope Cheney et al can work some diplomatic magic and smooth things over. My Indian friend says “heck, Kashmir isn’t even worth fighting over. This is ridiculous.”

And congratulate me - I finally figgered out how to bold words on the sdmb.

PS: If you are a Kashmiri resident, I mean no slight. I meant that Kashmir is ungovernable by and unfriendly to India, and not worth the effort or loss of life to try to subdue and contain it.

General note on nukes:

Setting off a nuke is a very precise event, and if even one small step happens the tiniest bit too late or too soon, it just blows apart in chunks. Nukes are always on the ragged edge of not working. Combine that with careful safeguards built in by some very smart engineers (to prevent accidental/unauthorized detonation: A BAD thing!), and the chances of any event inadvertantly setting one off is functionally nil.