First, they developed a naval version, the S-300F/SA-N-6. They were listed as Anti-Air due to treaties but included ability to easily reconfigure the system into anti-shipping missles by locking onto surface targets (There is some sperg about how the system integrates with the ship's RADAR I'll skip). The other was to develop a nuke-tipped 5V55, to let you launch tacnuke strikes from your S-300 systems.
That sort of thing is laughably easy. The missile doesn't care what its aimed at so long as the radar its hooked up to can see it.
Terrier and
Talos, the USN's first SAM systems, could go after surface ships no problem. There's pics out of there of a destroyer escort we used as a Talos target using a dummy practice warhead and it turns out a top-attack strike from a 3,400 pound missile will damn near break a destroyer escort in half, warhead or not. Especially since said warhead had about 50% more high explosive inside than that of a 16"/50 HC shell at 225 pounds, so it would be more than enough to completely wreck just about anything afloat. When used as an AA weapon it actually got a two-for-one special on some MiG's in Vietnam once as there was enough debris in the air after detonation to knock out the first guy's wingman as he flew through it.
The missile doesn't need to know where it is so long as the ship knows where the missile is.
Doesn't the S-300 have a 50-90km range? Who the fuck are they going to find willing to light off a nuke 50km from where they are standing, while still being sober enought to push the button? Why not just give them a thermonuclear hand grenade to throw?
Nukes are extremely powerful, but kiloton scale nukes are not weapons of total obliteration like popular imagination makes them out to be. Just near-total obliteration.
BOAR was designed to let a frickin' Skyraider deploy 20kt yield warheads (or about 25% more powerful than Little Boy), and that had a range of just 12km
and the plane was expected to be in the air and subjected to the full blast effects.
Enola Gay was 16km away when Little Boy went off, 18.5km from the detonation point when the blast wave hit the plane, and they all came back alive and well. Besides, any sort of intervening terrain like hills or buildings drastically cuts down on the blast wave, which outside the immediate detonation area where you're cooked alive is the most dangerous part of the detonation. Just wear dark goggles, go prone behind something sturdy, and don't look at the new sun and you'll be fine.
In defense of those things, they were given to front line soldiers in West Germany. These were the tripwire units that were there to literally die for the flag and justify intervention. Strategic Planners assumed that if they were going to die anyway, they may as well allow them to go out in style.
It also only had a yield of 20 tons of TNT, and could be remotely fired once loaded, so crews were instructed to load it on top of a hill or rise, head down the reverse slope trailing a trigger wire behind them, and then go prone before hitting the button, which would keep you pretty damn safe, especially since it had a 2km range. The US military was
not expecting these guys to die. Yet, anyways.
During the beginning of the war, I near burnt out my retinas looking for Russian naval assets; stuff like Putin's yachts, subs, certain patrol boats & frigates, etc. I'd say that painting them in such a way *could* help hide them from people using lower resolution/OSINT imaging; but probably not so much for shit like Global Hawk, while the CIA & NSA laugh in Keyhole (KH-11+).
That's the 2019 photo Trump leaked of the Iranian space program's latest success story, and is suspected to be from Key Hole. 10cm/4in per pixel resolution, which is just about enough to measure someone's dick size.
And now for the mandatory shitpost fee:
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