Vague memories, just off the top of my head, the Warhead and nosecone to a Pershing II short range missile. I'm not certain, but that's the name that leaps to mind. Deployed by the army in western Europe during the cold war. I am certain it's an army missile warhead though. If not a Pershing, possibly a Lance. From the quality of the picture I'd say vintage 65 to 85.
Few reference pictures were printed in black and white after the early eighties. Probably no longer in service.

It's a weapon of mass destruction!

Call in Mr Blix!

;)

Close, Harm.

It's a weapon of mass killing, but NOT a weapon of mass destruction.......

It looks like a Sprint or HIBEX ABM. I'd say Sprint. A very, very cool missile.

I'll defer to Anna on this. It's been a long time since I used to pay real attention to it. My bad.

I was hoping Anna would comment on this so I could add some cool links to my bookmarks. At least I got the age of the system about right. Since few ABM's were deployed, and this one never was, I feel a little better.

Hat's off to Anna.

Sorry Neil, I forgot our bombs are good but theirs are bad, must be a victim of that evil French propaganda again.

Read the comment again, Harm - I said it is a weapon of mass killing, but not mass destruction.

Anna has it right - it is a Sprint class warhead.

And it is probably one of the deadliest little inventions around - it kills by both the nuclear blast and a stream of high velocity Neutrons - one of the so-called "neutron bombs".

Harm - did you have your sense of humor surgically removed, or is it a congenital thing?

neil that was a joke, where did you lose your sense of humour?

I will put a ;) every time a do a funny from now on.

;)

Sprint ABM, mid 1960s. 100 gee acceleration off the launch rail- 0 to 60 in 30 milliseconds; in 1964 my dad was a US Army air defense artilleryman, in line to be a Sprint missile batallion commander. Shame it didn't become operational.

Sure would be nice to have some of these on ships off the coast of North Korea about now, wouldn't it?

Hey, if this post is still relevant, I'd like to add a note. If the first stage were tubular, rather than conical, that picture really does look like a Pershing II. The PII was also considered for an enhanced radiation warhead. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that both missiles have a common heritage.

So puggs: your post was certainly in the right ballpark. Given the CEP of ballistic missiles, that's close enough.

Yep. Thats a Nike-Sprint ABM. It was to have a noo-cu-lar warhead.