B5 defense grid

This is my personal theory why Earth's defense grid was so disappointing

*Earth's defense grid was rather pathetic considering the fact
that a little over 14 years ago over 20,000 ships were wiped out at the
Battle of the Line by the Minbari, to little or no effect. Given this,
you would expect the people who designed the grid to have included
everything from slingshots to nukes, which we know Earthforce has and
can destroy Minbari cruisers, as the destruction of the Blackstar
proves.

*The grid fired off an awful lot of missiles which rushed and did
a lot of damage by ramming into ships, but didn't explode.

Now as I'm sure all you mad scientists know, being hit by a large object
going at Mach whatever will do a ship much damage, so it is possible
that these missiles were simply Kinetic energy weapons rather than
nukes, they are cheaper after all! However considering the massive
effect that the Minbari war had on Earth, I find it very unlikely that
they didn't load the platforms for ( insert your favorite all-powerful
alien species here.)

I think that the answer lies with President Clark, an unashamed nut case
who decides to take the Earth with him. In "Rising Star" the new
president says something like "he was obsessed with you because he
couldn't control you." Sheridan's fleet was Clark's ultimate nightmare,
the end to his regime, so my guess is he wanted to make Sheridan suffer
for taking him on. I think he fired the missiles WITHOUT arming them.
Their ONLY purpose was to hold off the fleet while the particle weapons
armed. If they had fired, Sheridan would have had to live with the guilt
of being partially responsible for the destruction of Earth, and Clark
would have had his revenge. The grid didn't do that much damage because
it wasn't supposed to.

What do you think?
Luke

Luke wrote...
I agree completely, When the missiles started launching, I thought "oh
dear, nukes"
But was shocked when they just hit the ships without detonating.

Paul.

There are a number of problems associated with keeping nukes in
earth orbit.

1. Nukes are high maintance weapons, requiring a day a year or so per
nuke.

2. The explosion of nukes, (espically the high numbers seen in the
episode) would effectivley kill of a large proportion of life on the
planet. Only really useful if the attackers plan was genoicde.

3. A terriorist oragnisation could probaly gate in, close to one of
the satalites and push it out of orbit. If they were able to
set of a nuke on the satalite, there might be one big explosion.

4. Nukes going of close together would tend to interupt each others
flight path and detonations, so effectivly, a sucide squad of fighters
could prevent many missiles reaching their target.

5. They could be nuked armed, the Pres. just didn't have the
authority alone to arm them. Even today it requires at least
three authorisations to launch a nuke. (Deadman switches
aside).

Andrew