proximity fuse

noun

1. an electronically triggered device designed to detonate an explosive charge in a missile, etc, at a predetermined distance from the target

Example Sentences

A proximity fuse onboard the interceptor is set to explode when it comes within 10 meters of the target.

From Slate

Ultimately, Merle Tuve’s team settled on a radio proximity fuse, which would prove crucial to fighting against the V-1, the Nazis’ deadly drones deployed late in the war, which struck terror among Londoners with both their whirling travel sound and the 12 seconds of silence that accompanied their final descent to impact.

From Slate

Historians are nearly unanimous in the belief that operations research, code breaking, radar, sonar and the proximity fuse played larger roles in the Allied victory than the atomic bomb, but it was the bomb that got all the attention.

From Scientific American

Lastly, so-called kinetic options, such as a Coyote Block 2 interceptor weapon, could directly intercept and explode an approaching drone or use a proximity fuse for an “area” explosive effect to knock out small groups of drones.

From Fox News

In 1939, Joan Strothers and Sam Curran, then physics PhD students at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, were trying to develop a proximity fuse, an explosives detonator that triggered only when near the target.

From Nature