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.
And that's all I can say about that.
Of course there is no advantage to printers, but the addition of propulsion, targeting and stabilizers is absolutely necessary, since without active guidance these things are useless as weapons.
So shoot 100lb packs of printing tungsten at the printing station in orbit. Invisible to our enemies. Or retrofit C-130s to carry them most of the way up and shoot them the rest of the way.
What does the Hiroshima bomb strength have to do with the intended solution and goal? That is what everyone is overlooking.
Can you believe all the can’t-doers shooting this nearly perfect weapon system down on the thread?
Could be, they were friends...I hope they have somehow met up on the other side. It’s a nice thought :-)
As for the rest, what is the objective? And why could it not be achieved with a conventional weapon?
There’s nothing perfect about it. It has severe limitations and only a very narrow usage context. In most other scenarios, it’s not a “can’t do” it’s a “stupid to do.”
A very tiny but dense rod from God with precise guidance might be useful against some types of targets.
But I don’t see the advantage over more conventional weapons.
If Kim Jon suddenly vaporizes no one is gonna believe it was a freak asteroid strike anyhoo.
MOAB is delivered out the cargo hatch of a C-130 transport plane. It's too big for any other plane. C-130 is slow and non-stealthy.
It has a very limited number of useable scenarios, and is not a substitute for conventional weapons in most of them, and is certainly not a substitute in any scenario where nuclear weapons would be used. Should we have it in the arsenal? sure.
North Korea, Iran and China need to take the red pill... or they're gonna die wondering what happened.
What’s not great about smallish, guided, propelled past terminal velocity no-see-ums that create targeted holes with no NBC baggage and zero warning for the enemy, and can laterally destroy enemy sats in its free time?
Would like to know the velocity at impact...
Faster than dropped-from-air ordnance with attached propulsion. There might even be 5 small high-det bombs embedded in each 20ft rod.
From New Mexico, the land of “if I told you, I’d have to kill you”
I have it on good authority that we have Rods from God. They are not just dropped, but pushed. Testers were surprised at the penetrating power, which may be why they are being considered.
Supposedly we’ve been sending them up for years. One at a time they aren’t that heavy.
They are an ideal weapon for taking out a hardened facility.
Delusions from a blogger of age
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