Posted on 09/13/2017 9:04:35 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax
Was the top secret space coast launch late this past week really carrying components of "Rods from God," the nickname of a doomsday weapon known as "Project Thor" that can rain hell on North Korea in an attack traveling at Mach Ten? In an exclusive feature, the National ENQUIRER describes America's possible deployment of satellite arsenals of tungsten, non-nuclear rods the size of telephone poles, "the equivalent of a meteor crashing into the Earth's crust." The tabloid explains that deployment of this weaponry by the US military awaits only the President's "GO" order. "Unlike a nuclear weapon, the Rods from God leave no radioactive cloud." Another advantage of this unusual weapon system is that because it can be launched very rapidly, "North Korea will have no warning and no time to react!"
Army veteran and Boeing researcher, Jerry Pournelle, envisioned just such a weapon way back in the 1950's, but it didn't show up until 2003 in a US Air Force report. Allegedly, one rod is "20-foot-long, one-foot-in-diameter." Contained in a series of eight in two satellites, each rod has a "destructive yield of about 11 1/2 tons of TNT. This highly destructive weapon is being seen as preferable to a nuclear solution to North Korea's provocations toward the USA because no nuclear fallout would decimate the North Korean population. When the launch took place on Florida's east coast at Cape Canaveral, news anchors merely described it as being "top secret."
According to Wikipedia, the effectiveness of "Rods from God," lies in the notion of kinetic bombardment or "kinetic orbital strike." The destructive force “…comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high velocities." This military weaponry concept originated during the USA's Cold War period when the citizenry was still recovering from WWII's nuclear attacks that destroyed Japan and left the threat of nuclear fallout not only on the war victims but on future Japanese. Because kinetic energy fuels the inert tungsten rods, the kinetic bombardment is not prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty that prevents the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The Lazy Dog bomb, "a steel projectile shaped like a conventional bomb" was emptied out of aircraft onto enemy troops during the Vietnam War. It had the same effect as the firing of a machine gun vertically.
If true, use the Rods from God before the pyscho NK’s attack us or an ally!
LLSS even though we’ve been discussing this for years.
Jerks won’t see what blew ‘em up.
I remember that this was talked about during Desert Storm but never utilized. Makes me wonder if it’s a psyop weapon.
Rods from God, a convenient device for Sci-Fy writers when words fail making other tech believable. Never say never, but this is nothing but speculation.
Hope so.
These are a game changer. No defense possible. No fallout. Very targeted. No neighboring countries experiencing collateral damage.
If we get these, we need to use these as a PRIMARY means of waging war. No boots on the ground. No nation building. If you mess with us, we start vaporizing parts of your country. So just don’t mess with us.
No reason for it to be relegated to that. The principle is sound.
I am very grateful I am on our side...
Imagine what else we have that is not being talked about.
What if we have 3D metallic printers in orbit that can print them? And robots that can fasten guided propulsion jets?
the calculation of TNT equivalents may be off by
3 orders of magnitude.
Imagine how many times we would have used nuclear weapons by now if they were basically just really, REALLY big bombs with no radiation whatsoever.
i.e. if this thing exists, it’ll get used.
No radiation but, these do cause blew eyes.
Uhhh...
Specifically, UNDERSTATED by 2 or three orders of magnitude.
Should we have lots of these ready to go? Probably - but consider how the deployment such weapons would have fit into the world view of the previous incumbent President.
I thought this was going to be an article about the Olds 4-4-2.
...also it lowers the bar for possession of WMD's quite a bit. The ability to launch large satellites into orbit is quite a bit easier for bad actor nations to achieve than nuclear armed ICBMs.
Nice, but 1st strike isn’t the issue.
The 160 mile long shared border contains thousands of buried artillery and rocket rounds capable of being delivered South in about 4 minutes.
There are no non-nuclear solutions to effectively neutralizing this threat in time to avoid mass casualties in the South.
This assumes that such a response is triggered nearly automatically, in spite of senior leadership decapitation.
But there are fewer caves to hid them in. :-)
Or Rods from Hell, a 2003 F250 V10 tune up.
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