Firstly, I don't see why a missile impact is impossible ... s**t happens.
Secondly, why do you need to 'detonate' an antimatter missile at range?
If I were to design an anti-matter missile I would set it up to approach
hostile ships with the intention of impacting to do the most possible
damage. I would also design it so that if the missile is hit by a
sufficiently powerful anti-missile then it's war head goes off.
This combination gives you the best of both scenarios:
- If they don't shoot down the missile then it WILL impact and do a
LOT of damage.
- When they do shoot down the missile they MUST do it sufficiently
far from their ship so that the detonating missile doesn't do too
much damage to them.
Non-anti-matter missiles are not so useful because you can't guarantee
they will detonate after being shot down but an anti-matter containment
field WILL fail and the reaction MUST happen because you encased the
sucker in normal matter AND whatever they are using to shoot it down is
probably composed of normal matter too.
Anti-matter missiles are expensive SO intersperse them among your
normal Non-anti-matter missiles. What a nice surprise for the intended
victim 8^}.
Bruce... [email removed]
It's a trap, there's two of them!