You guys are comparing apples and oranges...
My point is that a mostly plastic basketball sized nuke drifting toward a
planet is going to be a hell of a lot harder to detect then a mile? football
field? sized meteor, and a lot harder to hit.
Now, all other things being equal, the higher the velocity/accel the easier it
is to detect and the harder it is to deflect. Assume an equivelent TL/effort
for defense. If you want to start adding fancy TL equipment to the weapon, all
things being equal, the nuke still comes out ahead.
At some point, you might as well be building ships. The scale of operations
some of you are talking about, is an entire war. Replace that operation with a
mass production of a thousand nukes, and see what comes out ahead. Of course
at sufficient TL/effort the PBN becomes a sitting duck, and some of the more
exotic weapons mentioned come into play, but certainly not below TL 15.
Jim Baranski
DEC Tewksbury MA