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Originally posted by Firebird:
Does chaff physically detonate a missile? I thought it was used to distract homing signals for radar-guided missiles. But I'm not an expert, I don't actually know.
the chaff doesn't detonate the missile, the missile detonates itself. chaff is usually used in air combat, which is really fast and requires fairly little damage (which compares quite nicely to space combat). in that context, missiles don't need to wait until impact to explode, so almost all air to air missiles have proximity detonators which set off the missile when it comes within a certain distance of its target. so when a missile decides that the cloud of chaff in front of it is its target, it moves close to it and then detonates. other missiles which don't proximity detonate, like hypervelocity missiles or, in a naval context, cruise missiles (which usually aren't decoyed by chaff to begin with) don't explode when they hit a cloud of chaff, so they can reacquire their target once they've passed through it. unfortunately, that means that implimenting decoys which play nicely with both explosive missiles and hypervelocity missiles in evn is really hard to do well
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you want to know if i'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses, and villages, after being a litterbug?
