I don’t know if we would do things like that today.

Way back in the 1950’s USAF had Convair design the “ultimate interceptor” for homeland air defense.  In those days the big worry was Russian bombers flying over the North Pole and nuking our cities.  ICBM's were still experimental in those days. In the search for an interceptor to stop the Russians,  Convair had already struck out once with the F102, which was nowhere near fast enough.  The best the poor old Deuce could do was Mach 1.2.  Convair’s political connections were excellent in those days, and USAF gave them a second chance.  Hughes Aircraft got the contract for the radar fire control in the F106 project.  When the red tape unwound, Convair got paid $8 million apiece for the airframe and engine, and Hughes got paid $8 million apiece for MA-1 radar fire control. 

   At this time, everyone wanted a missile armament, 50 cal machine guns were considered old school, WWII stuff.  Years later Viet Nam would change minds on this issue and guns came back into style.  Anyhow, the F106 carried two heat seeking guided missiles, two radar seeking guided missiles, and a single MB-1 Genie nuclear war headed unguided missile.  No guns of any kind. The nuclear warhead was of about the same yield as the one we used on Hiroshima only ten years earlier and the tremendous blast would make up for any minor errors in aim.  In actual fact, the blast from an MB-1 warhead would have done serious damage to anything on the ground as well.  Nobody talked about that.  Today, with the voters far more sensitive to issues of radiation, fallout, and blast damage, I don’t think the nuclear idea would fly.  I never heard that any of the later USAF fighters carried nukes. The F106’s in my squadron were built between 1957 and 1960.  They remained in service into the 1980’s.