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Good news: smaller pieces burn up much easier in the atmosphere, so in the case of an actual asteroid deflection it’s still a net gain.
Bad news: more potential navigation hazards.
I think that’s a fair trade.
Also, dispersing the boulders early enough means that most of them would miss Earth anyway.
I wouldn’t really consider them navigation hazards, space is really big and boulders are really small. You’d have to aim a probe really precisely at one in order to hit it.
Well, it is still better to get hit with a dozen Hiroshima-nuke-scale impacts than a single dinosaur-killer-scale impact.
Statistically, the majority of them should hit ocean anyway.
