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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Air Force's 'rods from god' could hit with the force of a nuclear weapon with no fallout
The 107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth's orbit. What they didn't count on was the US Air Force's most simple weapon ever: a tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
During the Vietnam War, the US used what it called "Lazy Dog" bombs. These were simply solid steel pieces, less than 2 inches long, fitted with fins. There was no explosive they were simply dropped by the hundreds from planes flying above Vietnam.
Lazy Dog projectiles (aka "kinetic bombardment" could reach speeds of up to 500 mph as they fell to the ground and could penetrate 9 inches of concrete after being dropped from as little as 3,000 feet. The idea is like shooting bullets at a target, except instead of losing velocity as it travels, the projectile is gaining velocity and energy that will be expended on impact. They were shotgunning a large swath of jungle, raining bullet-size death at high speeds.
Instead of hundreds of small projectiles from a few thousand feet, Thor used a large projectile from a few thousand miles above the Earth. The "rods from god" idea was a bundle of telephone-pole-size (20 feet long, 1 foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to 10 times the speed of sound.
The rod itself would penetrate hundreds of feet into the Earth, destroying any potential hardened bunkers or secret underground sites. More than that, when the rod hits, the explosion would be on par with the magnitude of a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon but with no fallout.
SOURCE: http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-rods-from-god-kinetic-weapon-hit-with-nuclear-weapon-force-2017-9
Fullduplexxx
(7,863 posts)SWBTATTReg
(22,129 posts)I had seen this somewhere before, called perhaps 'Vulcan'? This was proposed as a tank-killing countermeasure in Europe if need be. Years and years ago.
7962
(11,841 posts)Sounds like a bunker buster for sure.
RainCaster
(10,879 posts)Kinetic weapons are an amazing thing, if you have any interest in physics, they are very cool.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Maybe they would attach moving fins to the rear-end, to steer it.
global1
(25,250 posts)at that fast a speed?
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)ProfessorGAC
(65,054 posts). . .of any naturally occurring element. Around 18 g/mL. That's about 2.25x that of stainless steel and around 3x that of aluminum.
That makes them really heavy but with minimal volume, so the surface area to mass ratio is suited for this application too.
All that said, seems like it would be REALLY expensive.
panader0
(25,816 posts)That's a lot of tungsten, a rare metal.
ProfessorGAC
(65,054 posts)They wouldn't put one up there. Can you imagine the number of rockets that would be needed to put a bunch of those into orbit?
Dave Starsky
(5,914 posts)But they are even more rare than tungsten.
ProfessorGAC
(65,054 posts)I must have missed that on the table. I didn't see anything higher than 18. Careless reading on my part.
Dave Starsky
(5,914 posts)Because I was convinced that uranium was the most dense. So we both learned something this morning!
ProfessorGAC
(65,054 posts). . .look into getting tungsten milled into rotameter floats back in the 90's because you could put that, stainless and tantalum floats in and get three very different, accurate ranges on a multiplex reactor system.
We never did it because the floats were really expensive and we would have needed about 700 of them across the network.
We oversized the tubes and used aluminum, 316SS and tantalum. Tantalum was pretty expensive too.
KPN
(15,646 posts)misnomer if there ever was one.
HopeAgain
(4,407 posts)Cartoonist
(7,317 posts)God had the idea first.
RainCaster
(10,879 posts)Because they are small in diameter, long in shape and made of very high temperature materials they will survive. Not 100% intact but certainly enough to do the job.
lapfog_1
(29,205 posts)"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
published in 1966.
A Lunar colony wages war on earth by using a "rail gun" launching system to send moon rocks (big ones) wrapped in a minor amount of metal (for the rail gun) and send them via gravity well to targeted locations on earth.
The hard science part of this novel was pretty solid.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)and that was my first thought when I read the article. Science Fiction come to life
Javaman
(62,530 posts)is that nation on the receiving end of this won't know that's its NOT a nuke and will launch a nuke in reply. YAY!