Apologies for the following question but I fear that I have never been good at either maths or physics...
In the series Macross 7 (which is almost certainly by far the weakest of the lot but that's beside the point), the Macross 7 Colony Fleet runs into a bunch of really powerful aliens called Protodeviln - they get into a war with them and lots of things blow up.
During 'Operation Stargazer', the Protodeviln teleported a Reaction Warhead (which the Colony Fleet had attempted to plant in a vital enemy spot but they didn't know about the teleportation thing when they tried it) to approximately 50 metres off the hull of a Northhampton Class Stealth Frigate.
( http://www.steelfalcon.com/Macross/stargazer.shtml )
The Reaction Warhead then detonated which vaporised the ship (no wreckage at all was seen) and while the size of the explosion is hard to guess due to the changing camera angle, it had to be at least 2 kilometres in width.
So, basically, what is the minumum yield it would take to vaporise such a ship (250metre long ship, 160,000 tons)?
Weapon yield question
Moderator: NecronLord
Well, we could probably get by with assuming the "explosion" was just the fireball created by the warhead. That would put it somewhere between 10 and 20 MT in yield (calculated it to about 13.7 MT, but I could be off a bit). Call it a 15 MT yield for a ballpark figure.
Now, that's just going by the size of the fireball. Technically, to vaporize 160,000 tons of iron, you only need a 321 kT warhead to release its energy. However, given that those warheads don't seem to direct the energy very well, you're probably better off using megaton-class weapons...
Now, that's just going by the size of the fireball. Technically, to vaporize 160,000 tons of iron, you only need a 321 kT warhead to release its energy. However, given that those warheads don't seem to direct the energy very well, you're probably better off using megaton-class weapons...