Fuel... was a non-issue. The thing was a solid rocket motor made of nitrocellulose, zirconium and nitroglycerine that it used to get two kiloton neutron bombs within electronic-melting distance of nuclear warheads at re-entry speed. It was designed to airburst between 5,000 and 95,000 feet. It is left as an exercise for the student to determine the effects on the ground from a 2kt neutron bomb going off thousands of feet away. Obviously better than a 550kt thermonuclear device going off thousands of feet away? but not great. I've lately taken to getting rid of the fruit flies spawned by the pears my daughter didn't eat by lighting a poof of purell spray with a lighter. It doesn't kill the flies? It turns them into failurebeetles. MIRVs popped by a Sprint would still be, uhm, ballistic penetrators and uhh dirty bombs but that beats the alternative.

I wasn't much younger than I am now when I realized this was our deterrent strategy when I was a kid:

Thing about a secret missile defense system? It lacks deterrence. You wanna brag that fucka from the rooftops, like Reagan and SDI. Did we ever do more than a couple lame-ass tests? No. Did Gorbachev literally offer to discard all nukes if Ronnie was willing to drop SDI? According to David Hoffman, yes. It also violates two or three treaties off the top of my head and that's the sort of thing you don't want to be accused of at the UN Security Council.

It's been pointed out that decoys are 1:1 effective against interceptors and hella cheaper. R36 will haul 10 warheads; make the payload fairing twice as long and it'll haul 9 warheads and 11 decoys.

"strange game. The only winning move is... not to play"