These Air Force 'rods from god' could hit with the force of a nuclear weapon
The
107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear,
biological, or chemical weapons from being placed or used from Earth’s
orbit. What they didn’t count on was the U.S. 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 U.S. used what they called “Lazy Dog”
bombs. These were simply solid steel pieces, less than two 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 nine 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-sized death at high speeds.
That’s how Project Thor came to be.
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 sized (20 feet long, one foot in
diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to
ten times the speed of sound.
A concept design of Project Thor.
Related: These 5 hypersonic weapons are the future of military firepower >
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.
It would take 15 minutes to destroy a target with such a weapon.
One Quora user who works in the defense aerospace industry
quoted a cost of no less than $10,000 per pound to fire anything into
space. With 20 cubic feet of dense tungsten weighing in at just over
24,000 pounds, the math is easy. Just one of the rods would be
prohibitively expensive. The cost of $230 million dollars per rod was
unimaginable during the Cold War.
Like lawn darts, but with global repercussions.
to hit underground nuclear sites in rogue nations in the years
following 9/11. Interestingly enough, the cost of a single Minuteman III
ICBM was $7 million in 1962, when it was first introduced ($57 million
adjusted for inflation).
The trouble with a nuclear payload is that it isn’t designed to
penetrate deep into the surface. And the fallout from a nuclear device
can be devastating to surrounding, potentially friendly areas.
“Someone dropped a penny from the Empire State Building again.”
that hypersonic weapons pack a significant punch and might be the future
of global warfare.
