Rods from God.
Is there seriously anyone who hasn’t assumed that we have had those since Reagan?
Was the Trump tweet about the Iranian missile site hinting at this?
that was exactly what I thought of reading this and what the hell is that drone shuttle doing anyway?
Of course we have Rods from God. No one else does. And even that’s old tech for us.
The Rods are quite a jump in technology. I think Pournelle had some inkling from contacts in DARPA that we were looking at the possibility of doing this in the future. But even now I don’t think the tech is there. One caveat... the X37b. It is not up there to break records .
Exactly. They are probably the cheapest weapon to have. All those secret trips on the space shuttle were there for a reason. That's what happened to the NORK nuclear program.
Either Rods from God or this...
Hafnium controversy
The hafnium controversy is a debate over the possibility of ‘triggering’ rapid energy releases, via gamma ray emission, from a nuclear isomer of hafnium, 178m2Hf. The energy release is potentially 5 orders of magnitude (100,000 times) more energetic than a chemical reaction, but 2 orders of magnitude less than a nuclear fission
“Rods from God.
Is there seriously anyone who hasn’t assumed that we have had those since Reagan?”
We don’t. One big problem with them is there’s no way to guide them as precision weapons. They wouldn’t have anything comparable to nuclear weapon power.
DJT was referring to new and improved conventional weapons. The Jalopnik author has a reading comprehension problem, there was no claim of something “more powerful than nukes”.
Yup.
My first thought, as well.
However, I know them as Project Thor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
Watched a really cool show on SCI channel.