A Kinetic Penetrator from a high-speed camera taken seconds before impact.
Posted on 04/30/2010 10:20:35 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
In an age of rogue regimes and pre-emptive war, states developing clandestine nuclear programs know better than to leave them in plain sight. Anxious to ward off an American or Israeli attack, Iran, for example, appears to have buried its uranium-enrichment halls under 30 feet of earth and concrete. No doubt, canny proliferators will soon dig even deeper and better-armored holes.
But if they dig deeper, we can always go higher: hence the call for the “Rods From God.” More properly known as hypervelocity rod bundles, these weapons would simply be slender solid tungsten cylinders, 20 or 30 feet long and one or two feet in diameter. The rods would be sent into space and fired from satellites at bunkers on the ground, which they would hit at speeds of more than 10,000 feet per second, penetrating deep into the earth without any explosives. The idea is far from new. Jerry Pournelle, a science-fiction writer and space-weapons expert, conceived it while working for Boeing in the late 1950s; he called the weapon Thor, and as he explained in an interview, “People periodically rediscover it.”
Physicists have observed serious limitations to the idea, beginning with the high cost of lifting heavy tungsten poles into orbit. The rods were nevertheless included among “future system concepts” in a recent Air Force “Transformation Flight Plan,” which envisioned their “capability to strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space.” Even if Thor will not be hurling tungsten thunderbolts at suspected bunkers in Iran any time soon, the military has accelerated its pursuit of space weaponry; one study of nonclassified budgets released earlier this year indicated that spending on space-weapons research has grown by more than a billion dollars each year since 2000, with an eye toward establishing uncontestable “space superiority.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Mentioned in Tom Clancy’s EndWar.
I love these weapons
5.56mm
I am far from being a newbie and have not been reading my 1500 plus posts. I am coming up on my one year anniversary.
I saw that trailer for END WAR where they used this.
Jarts.
without fins.
Congratulations. Keep up the good work.
5.56mm
LOL, was going to admonish the poster that you don’t qual as a newb. Then saw who it was - M Kehoe aka 5.56mm - and hesitated. He’s OLD SCHOOL. To him, *I’M* a newb.
Still, well said. Good post. And I’m pretty sure 5.56mm meant that as a compliment. (Please don’t Viking Kitty me if I’m wrong, M Kehoe.)
5.56mm
Well, I thank him for the compliment
:)
this article is 4 yrs old. Post should be deleted
What is the guidance system?
How the weapon works is they electromagnetically accelerate a 5,000 kg perditrium-ferrum rod (uranium-iron) so that its trajectory puts it on course to its target. Stationed at approximately 410 km altitude, their projectiles typically reach velocities of 2.8 km/s. This gives each shot 20 GJ of kinetic energy, equivalent to 4 tons of nitrogenous explosive. Since all of this energy is in the direction of impact, the destructive capabilities of each shot is impressive. The other major advantage of this weapon system is its flexibility. Although each shot is able to destroy any armored vehicle as it is designed for, it also contains sufficient force to sink all but the largest sea-vessels and to penetrate through most kinds of armored bunkers. conceivable to use on tight infantry formations as well.
It seems that other people publish older articles and posters seem interested in this weapon.
I sense a tinge of jealousy.
The most described system is ‘an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance.’ The weapon can be down-scaled, an orbiting “crowbar” rather than a poleThe time between deorbiting and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a world-wide range There is no requirement to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles. Although the SALT II (1979) prohibited the deployment of orbital weapons of mass destruction, it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional weapons
Published 12-10-2006 ??
And that M Kehoe? What a newb....
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