found in 
Washington garage 
. The AIR-2 Genie 
The AIR-2 Genie was an unguided air to air nuclear missile. It was developed early in the cold war prior to ICBM's and guided air to air missiles. By the early 50's, the Soviets had reversed engineered the B-29 Superfortress into the TU-4 which could theoretically bomb the United States in a one way mission. The bomber's routes would take them over the Arctic Circle.
An air to air guided missile sounds like something Curtis LeMay would come up with in a fever dream. However, the mission profile makes sense in the context of its time. The Genie was designed to be fired into bomber formations, as that was the only delivery mechanism at the time. The 1.5kT warhead would be detonated at the cruising altitude ~33,000 feet. The missile didn't need to be guided since the blast radius would take out the bomber formation over the uninhabited Arctic Circle. It was never intended to be fired over civilian population center and the Air Force was keen to show that it was ""harmless"" to people on the ground.
Curtis "Bomb's Away!" LeMay
To demonstrate , during the Plumbob John test, five Air Force personnel stood below the blast.
The AIR-2 Genie was deployed to the Royal Canadian Air Force in a Dual Key arrangement. This ment that the Leafs would deploy the weapon, but the Burgers had to give the order. The Genie was obsolete by the mid 60's when guided missile technology improved and ICBM's became the main delivery systems.
Titan 2 ICBM at the Titan Missile Museum
I got to see one in person when I went to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, AZ. Well worth it if you're in the area.
Inert AIR-2 Genie at the Pima Air and Space Museum
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The Genie was a really cool design. Probably completely impractical but they literally thought "what if we just detonated a nuke in their bomber formation" and turned it into an actual real life weapon lmao.
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The Nike Sprint is maybe my favorite cold war defensive weapon.
A missile designed to intercept icbms in their terminal stage by accelerating so fast the case of the warhead begins to glow white hot. Mega cool.
Another one that fascinates me is Brilliant Pebbles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles?wprov=sfla1
It was the final iteration of SDI (which was silly for the time, but developed novel concepts for how to create a shield against nuclear weapons. The really interesting part is why it failed- the primary concerns were cost of orbiting small satellite constellations and the cost of long range air-air missiles with seeker heads sensitive enough to perform interceptions at hundreds of miles- both of which are solved problems by now.
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zoz
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zle
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zozzle
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I'm currently listening to an audiobook about the development of nuclear strategy. They talk about it briefly. It was more of an "Oh frick the reds have the bomb and can deliver!" deterrent weapon. That was the thought process, and apparently it worked for what they needed it for.
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It's okay
It's no Project Orion or Project Pluto
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Just an unshielded nuclear reactor on a cruise missile spewing radiation in its wake. No biggie.
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Russia appears to be developing something very similar in current year and they've already had a fatal testing accident with it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident
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A modified Navajo missile -- test article for an XK-PLUTO payload -- dives away from a carrier plane. Unlike the real thing, this one carries no hydrogen bombs, no direct-cycle fission ramjet to bring retaliatory destruction to the enemy. Travelling at Mach 3 the XK-PLUTO will overfly enemy territory, dropping megaton-range bombs until, its payload exhausted, it seeks out and circles a final enemy. Once over the target it will eject its reactor core and rain molten plutonium on the heads of the enemy. XK-PLUTO is a total weapon: every aspect of its design, from the shockwave it creates as it hurtles along at treetop height to the structure of its atomic reactor, is designed to inflict damage.
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It's one of the only potential solutions to the threat of a nuclear bomber fleet. There's just not really anything else that could realistically stop it at the time.
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