The U.S. Navy Wants Nuclear Missiles That Self-Destruct Themselves

It’s a familiar scene on old TV shows: a military or NASA rocket goes off course just after lift-off. Then the flight director in the control room issues a command: “Push the red button.” The rocket then self-destructs.But the U.S. Navy has another idea: let the rocket decide when to blow itself up.More specifically, the Navy is concerned about what happens during test firings of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, such as the Trident, from ballistic missile submarines. If t