[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Technically, you can be at GSO without being in GSO (GSO is a distance as well as a delta-v). In the case of the example, the spacecraft would diverge away from the planet after releasing the bombs at GSO. The momentum of the bombs would carry them over the next forty-five minutes towards their targets, and their maneuver thrusters would help them make the final approach.

You've got a non-superscience fusion rocket. That gives 0.005g acceleration, enough to divert the ship all of 74 miles in the time it takes to get from 22,000 miles up at 10 miles per second. If you intend a fly-by on Earth, releasing the bombs at 10 miles per second closing velocity, and you want to miss the Earth you need to move 4000 miles off your original course, unless you're okay with your bombs just landing on a thin band of the planet around one edge in which case you can get away with a 100 miles or so move movement (but ~70 miles isn't really enough). The latter means starting your course correction about 26,000 miles up. The former means doing so ~160,000 miles out.

And no, GSO: Geosynchronous Orbit. It's not just a distance.

As for it being an illegal manuever, ballistic attacks travel forever in space. In the case of range, I see that as maximum accurate range for specific locations, but 10 megaton bombs really do not need specific locations (until kinetic kill weapons). As long as you are within a 1 km of your target, that is all you need.

At which point you aren't using the basic combat rules.

In order to counter the bombs, you would need to be able to engage and destroy 2,700 SM+0 targets in 15 3-minute combat turns. At the same time, the major batteries of the spacecraft are attacking surface targets as it does its flyby.

Note that you have to find the ground systems, and that's a lot harder than finding a spaceship, or a bomb in space.

Depending on the protocol, it may also have released its drones, which may release their own bombs. For example, a SM+4 drone with one major battery of bombs can have 15 16cm 100 kiloton antimatter bombs. With 900 such drones, that means that there would also be 13,500 SM-2 bombs to deal with. Of course, we are talking about a terror load rather than a combat load.

Now you're starting to talk serious amounts of warheads, and $27 billion just for the payloads.