Jon, one would think, that to prevent decoys from cooling too quickly, all one needs is to put a larger version of chemical hand warmer in them. Interesting stuff, the cat and mouse game. Especially when the Russians and the Americans are not sure if their decoy and intercept ideas will work in actual practice.
i
Yes, we tried to start yet ANOTHER insane arms race with the Russians over this, but internal collapse put an end to it, at least for a couple decades. The problems of basing any rational geopolitical strategy on trusting that your anti-missile system can stop EVERY one of the other side's re-entry vehicles is a kind of insanity we fortunately avoided. The obvious downside is that missing even ONE RV ends up losing an entire city.
No one actually knows what will happen to a real city with one of the high-tech nuclear devices, as nobody has used one against a real city, thank goodness! But, modern two-stage weapons are WAY more powerful than the primitive single-stage devices used in Japan, so it is pretty clear it would be SO much worse!
Nowadays, it isn't highly sophisticated rivals that we have to worry about, it is a tramp freighter with a rogue cargo container steaming into some port. Homeland Security is working on that, but it is a pretty tough problem.
Jon
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