Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......??? tag A heavy object dropped from a high altitude from an aircraft moving very very fast.

Or from orbit.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......??? tag A heavy object dropped from a high altitude from an aircraft moving very very fast.

Space Shuttle Door Gunners!

Allah Akbar!

Bush/Cheney may have a lot of faults, but at least they have the .mil looking at options and making plans.

If there was a Clinton/Gore/Kerry/etc. liberal in the White House, he would just be wringing his hands and hoping diplomacy works.....which would really leave us in the lurch when the SHTF over this Iran thing.

It's obviously a proxy test...but for what? Most likely a KE weapon. If you hit an underground Nuke facility, could there be secondaries?

Bomber

Remember a couple years ago when they were talking about developing bunker-buster nukes?  Deep penetrating, low yield.

Compare the test of this technology with current events.

Quoted: It's obviously a proxy test...but for what? Most likely a KE weapon. If you hit an underground Nuke facility, could there be secondaries? Bomber

hmm anyone looked a a launch schedule lately, any classifed launches?...

Cover story for a test of a small pure fusion warhead prehaps? That or an orbitaly droped kinetic energy penetrator.

We have so much data on shock effect in harden structures it doesn't make any sense on why we would have to restablish a baseline with conventional explosives...I don't know what we are playing with right now at the Nevada test site, but I feel very confident in saying it isn't what they claim it to be.

All the press will be seated in the Nevada desert on grandstands for the demonstration.  From Washington Rumsfeld will call and order the yield increased to 1400 tons.  Then Rumsfeld's voice will be heard over a loudspeaker:

"Greetings members of the press.  You took me to task about my non-delivery of shock and awe in Iraq.   I just wanted to let you all know that there are no hard feelings about that."

Rods From God news item story thingy

A 20 ft. long, 1 ft. diameter chunk of tungsten samcking the dirt at over 12,000 mph might be in the same energy range. I don't know though.

Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......???

During the quadrenial defense reveiw one of the weapons systems on the wish list was a kinetic energy penetrator satilite. Basically what it is a cluster of 1200-2400lbs ceramic cased depleted uranium darts that would be fired from the launch satilite at a set of GPS cordinates. During rentry it would acheive around mach 20 as it hit the ground, slicing through rock, concrete, and stainless steel like a hot knife through butter. In sheer force it would be a near nuclear effect in the kiloton range. The tricky thing about engineering such a system though is keeping the projectile intact in the face of the thermal stresses. If the penetrator vaporizes and becomes an ionized plasma it will just disperse and have a negliable effect on a surface target other then turning the first few centimeters of soil into glass.

Quoted: Cover story for a test of a small pure fusion warhead prehaps? That or an orbitaly droped kinetic energy penetrator. We have so much data on shock effect in harden structures it doesn't make any sense on why we would have to restablish a baseline with conventional explosives...I don't know what we are playing with right now at the Nevada test site, but I feel very confident in saying it isn't what they claim it to be.

well actually I can think of a case.... We may have a specific target in mind and want to see if we can hit it, and the geology may be similiar....

Quoted: Road trip? SF campout? Beer, folding chairs, sun glasses? Would be fun to watch.

I'm there!

Interesting read:

Link

The Rods from God
Are kinetic-energy weapons the future of space warfare?
by Michael Goldfarb
06/08/2005 12:00:00 AM

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BY CHANCE, the same day that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was released in theaters across the country, the world learned of the Bush administration's plans to weaponize space. So while critics speculated about the parallels between the Evil Empire and the Bush administration, pundits debated the merits of "space superiority"--the allies it would alienate, the treaties it would violate, the billions it would cost. The irony was not lost on Teresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, whose insistence that the world would not "accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star," was carried in the pages of the New York Times.

Among the weapons the Air Force might deploy are space-based lasers, a space plane capable of delivering a half-ton payload anywhere in the world in 45 minutes, and the "rods from god." The rods are currently just a concept--and have been since the early 1980s--but, if the myriad technical and political hurdles to deployment could be overcome, the system could represent a tremendous leap forward in the military's ability to destroy underground, hardened facilities of the type that have allowed Iran and other rogue states to violate the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty with impunity.


HOW DO THE RODS WORK? The system would likely be comprised of tandem satellites, one serving as a communications platform, the other carrying an indeterminate number of tungsten rods, each up to 20 feet in length and 1 foot in diameter. These rods, which could be dropped on a

target with as little as 15 minutes notice, would enter the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 36,000 feet per second--about as fast as a meteor. Upon impact, the rod would be capable of producing all the effects of an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, without any of the radioactive fallout. This type of weapon relies on kinetic energy, rather than high-explosives, to generate destructive force (as do smart spears, another weapon system which would rely on tungsten rods, though not space-based).

Clearly the rods are a first-strike, offensive weapon. The nation's aging fleet of ICBMs, and its more modern Ohio-class submarines--each carrying 24 Trident missiles--will serve as an adequate nuclear deterrent well into the 21st century, but nuclear weapons cannot deter rogue states from developing their own nuclear arsenals.

Iran has used deeply buried facilities, such as the one in Natanz, to shelter its nuclear program from an assault similar to Israel's raid on Iraq's Osirak facilities. This has limited America's options for intervention. A conventional attack on such facilities might succeed in setting the Iranian program back a few years, but due to the presumed dispersal of equipment over a number of sites across the Islamic Republic, only good intelligence and a great deal of luck would eliminate the threat entirely. And while a nuclear attack could be tactically successful, it is politically unviable. A few well-placed tungsten rods, however, would guarantee the destruction of the targeted facilities (assuming timely and accurate intelligence).


OF COURSE THE RODS would not be a panacea for proliferation. It is hard to imagine how the "rods from god" would alter the equation in North Korea, which possesses thousands of rockets and artillery pieces capable of hitting Seoul in retaliation for any perceived act of aggression by the United States. But no other rogue state can hold a gun to the head of the international community the way North Korea can. Absent such a non-nuclear deterrent, rogue states such as modern-day Iran and Saddam-era Iraq have employed hardened, underground bunkers (note the recent discovery of a large, underground insurgent lair in Anbar) as their primary defense against American air superiority.

There are a number of interest groups working to stymie plans to build either a new generation of fission bombs or space-based weapons (see here, and here). These groups present reasonable arguments against both strategic avenues. For instance, if the administration starts production on a newly designed nuclear weapon, it would likely be in violation of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Furthermore, such weapons run the risk of mitigating the military's well-founded fear of launching a nuclear first-strike.

The arguments against space weapons range from the practical--they will be extremely expensive to build and maintain, and they may not work--to the ideological. Teresa Hitchens simply maintains that, "The world will not tolerate this." John Pike, of globalsecurity.org, speculates that the likelihood of the rods, or any other system, being deployed in space over the next decade were "next to nil." The reason, he explains, is that the military appears to be putting very little money into the research and development of such systems--though the military's immense classified budget could in theory be hiding some of the evidence.

Pike offered another interesting explanation for why the rods may remain on the drawing board--the GBU-28. The GBU-28 was designed to destroy underground bunkers, but there have been doubts about whether it can actually penetrate Iran's buried facilities. Pike says they would--"like a hot knife through butter"--and that this misperception may have been intentionally fostered: "to lull the mullahs into a false sense of security."


THE

RODS may indeed be more science fiction than science. They are at least 10 years away from being operational, and the cost of launching heavy tungsten rods into orbit would be, well, astronomical. Other financial challenges include the satellite's "absentee-ratio," which refers to number of satellites, or in this case bundles of rods, which would be necessary to assure proximity to the target.

Furthermore, it may be necessary to slow substantially the rods' rate of speed to prevent them from vaporizing on impact--though retrorockets might offer a solution to this problem. Simply attaching a tungsten rod to the tip of an ICBM would overcome many of these hurdles, but would create another serious problem: the need to involve the Russians and Chinese, who might detect such a launch and mistake it for an American nuclear attack on their own territories.

Whether the Air Force does ultimately pursue this particular platform to fulfill its vision of American space superiority is a decision that should not be taken lightly. There are a great many obstacles to getting a tungsten rod into space and bringing it back down on the nuclear facilities or command centers of our enemies. Such obstacles range from our continued reliance on unreliable intelligence to the probability that our enemies would adapt to the new technology. Nevertheless, it's likely that space will be weaponized. The only question is whether the U.S. Air Force or the People's Liberation Army will be at the vanguard of the revolution.


Michael Goldfarb is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.


Bomber

Quoted: Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......??? During the quadrenial defense reveiw one of the weapons systems on the wish list was a kinetic energy penetrator satilite. Basically what it is a cluster of 1200-2400lbs ceramic cased depleted uranium darts that would be fired from the launch satilite at a set of GPS cordinates. During rentry it would acheive around mach 20 as it hit the ground, slicing through rock, concrete, and stainless steel like a hot knife through butter. In sheer force it would be a near nuclear effect in the kiloton range. The tricky thing about engineering such a system though is keeping the projectile intact in the face of the thermal stresses. If the penetrator vaporizes and becomes an ionized plasma it will just disperse and have a negliable effect on a surface target other then turning the first few centimeters of soil into glass.

This is a fantastic concept!!! Are you suggesting that we already have such a delivery platform in place?? (In orbit)

If so, how and when might we have gotten it there??? Inquireing minds want to know!!!......

ttiwwp

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......??? During the quadrenial defense reveiw one of the weapons systems on the wish list was a kinetic energy penetrator satilite. Basically what it is a cluster of 1200-2400lbs ceramic cased depleted uranium darts that would be fired from the launch satilite at a set of GPS cordinates. During rentry it would acheive around mach 20 as it hit the ground, slicing through rock, concrete, and stainless steel like a hot knife through butter. In sheer force it would be a near nuclear effect in the kiloton range. The tricky thing about engineering such a system though is keeping the projectile intact in the face of the thermal stresses. If the penetrator vaporizes and becomes an ionized plasma it will just disperse and have a negliable effect on a surface target other then turning the first few centimeters of soil into glass. This is a fantastic concept!!! Are you suggesting that we already have such a delivery platform in place?? (In orbit) If so, how and when might we have gotten it there??? Inquireing minds want to know!!!......

Shoot a tungsten dart the size of a telephone pole at it from orbit at 9 kilometers a second.  It's the only way to be sure.

"Rod of God deep penetrator?"
If I had to choose a porn star nickname, that would be it!

paging Armed_Scientist.

Quoted: Sounds like a test of a conventional blast that would be replicated in the field using a tactical nuke. Anyone know the cost of that much C4? Kharn

Bingo!

Wasn't there a scifi book that had the concept of kinetic harpoons?

Quoted: Wasn't there a scifi book that had the concept of kinetic harpoons?

lots of em, its a rather old and elgant idea that the military took a long time to pick up on....

Quoted: Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......??? During the quadrenial defense reveiw one of the weapons systems on the wish list was a kinetic energy penetrator satilite. Basically what it is a cluster of 1200-2400lbs ceramic cased depleted uranium darts that would be fired from the launch satilite at a set of GPS cordinates. During rentry it would acheive around mach 20 as it hit the ground, slicing through rock, concrete, and stainless steel like a hot knife through butter. In sheer force it would be a near nuclear effect in the kiloton range. The tricky thing about engineering such a system though is keeping the projectile intact in the face of the thermal stresses. If the penetrator vaporizes and becomes an ionized plasma it will just disperse and have a negliable effect on a surface target other then turning the first few centimeters of soil into glass.

Would a "reinforced carbon carbon" outer skin be sufficient to prevent the DU penetrator from disintegrating during entry?

Quoted: Wasn't there a scifi book that had the concept of kinetic harpoons?

First one I ever remember reading was a Robert Heinlein… (“The moon is a harsh mistress” ... Maybe?)

There’s been hundreds of other books that used the idea since then.

hrmm

100 Kg @ 6600 m/s = 2178000000 joules

10 to the 10th joules in a ton of TNT

The way the formula works, you can add another 0 to the energy output by adding another 0 to the mass.

Quoted: Maybe we'll be lucky and there'll be an immigration protest next to the test site.

I wish they'd do it over Chicago.

Quoted: hrmm 100 Kg @ 6600 m/s = 2178000000 joules 10 to the 10th joules in a ton of TNT The way the formula works, you can add another 0 to the energy output by adding another 0 to the mass.

A 1 ft by 20 ft rod of Tungsten is ~10 tons.

10 tons = 9071 kg


so


I get 1.975x 10 ^11 Joules



or 19.75 tons of TNT

check my math

Now that's weird....I must have hit some buttons on my little scientific calculator wrong. Becasue I did the math and no kidding I got Pi (3.14159....)


/me runs to the tinfoil hat store

Atlas 2AS will orbit about 3,719 kg... call that the theoretical max.
An uncontrolled deorbit from LEO is about 9000 m/s... call that the theoretical max.

I’m not seeing how “rods from god” can even get close to the energy yields they are talking about in the test.

My geography professor said that this blast is a terrible idea due to the large amount of lead-contaminated soil it will throw into the air.

He said this could have adverse health effects on the Las Vegas population and efforts will be made to stop this blast.

Quoted: My geography professor said that this blast is a terrible idea due to the large amount of lead-contaminated soil it will throw into the air. He said this could have adverse health effects on the Las Vegas population and efforts will be made to stop this blast.

Let this be a lesson to you DoD... Don't throw a bunch `O dirt in the air because geography professors "make efforts" to stop you.

I was TDY at White Sands around 1978. We set off the largest convential bomb ever
exploded. Operation Dice Throw. I dont remember exactly how much AN/FO there
was but it was huge. You could see it from 4 miles away,where we were set up.
It was a blast effects test, my group was operating commo equipment.
It left a pretty big hole in the ground. IIRC 100 yds across and 100 ft deep.

Tag for pics.

I really hope they use tungsten and not DU.

Quoted: A heavy object dropped from a high altitude from an aircraft moving very very fast.

Quoted: Atlas 2AS will orbit about 3,719 kg... call that the theoretical max. An uncontrolled deorbit from LEO is about 9000 m/s... call that the theoretical max. I’m not seeing how “rods from god” can even get close to the energy yields they are talking about in the test.

I reread the description of the test, they are using 700 tons of explosive to drive a shaped charge. A shaped charge squeezes a cone of metal into a high velocity jet of metal. I'm guessing that the shaped charge will simulate the rod impact. Since only a portion of the explosive energy will be transferred to the jet of metal this could explain the much smaller amount of kinetic energy calculated for these “rods of god”.

Rich V

If it were a KE weapon from orbit...wouldn't it be easily seen even during the daytime...like a big meteor?

Quoted: Cover story for a test of a small pure fusion warhead prehaps? That or an orbitaly droped kinetic energy penetrator. We have so much data on shock effect in harden structures it doesn't make any sense on why we would have to restablish a baseline with conventional explosives...I don't know what we are playing with right now at the Nevada test site, but I feel very confident in saying it isn't what they claim it to be.

yes... yes it would, and im guessing the reaction by iran would be something like this...

Abdullah: Hey Ackmed

Ackmed: What do you want, dont you see that im about to get this camels phone number!

Abdullah: Seriously, look up! Does that look like one of those big fucking USA lawn darts coming at us?

Ackmed: OH SHIT! quick pick up the underground nuclear test facility and silos and run like hell!

Abdullah: umm we cant, just grab the girlfriend/camel and run like hell!

Then theres the loudest THUMP! sound that has ever been heard and both Abdullah Ackmed both instantly return to dust.

Quoted: Quoted: A heavy object dropped from a high altitude from an aircraft moving very very fast.

Another day older and deeper in debt?

Quoted: Quoted: Wasn't there a scifi book that had the concept of kinetic harpoons? First one I ever remember reading was a Robert Heinlein… (“The moon is a harsh mistress” ... Maybe?) There’s been hundreds of other books that used the idea since then.

Footfall was great.

gonna tickle the yellowstone caldera.. a little early for 2012 but who knows....

700 tons of what i wonder. if tnt that would be a .7 kiloton bomb. but if the stuff is more powerful than tnt.....

I wonder when the enviro-freaks are going to go off on this.  Someone invite them to the test, also...

AC

"700 tonne explosivly formed charge"
Uhhhhh..............huh?????

"You load 700 tons and what do you get,
another day older and deeper in debt,
do do de do do do do de dooooo
do dee do do do doo doo dee doooooooooo"

So is it still technically a $200 NFA tax for a 700ton bomb?


Hold mah beer and watch this....                                     .... CA going into the pacific after the bomb is set off on the San Andreas fault.

Quoted: Quoted: Sounds like a test of a conventional blast that would be replicated in the field using a tactical nuke. Anyone know the cost of that much C4? Kharn I think you hit the unspoken point of this test. There is no delivery system for a bomb one tenth that size so it must be a proxy for the real thing. Nukes in this yield range are a reality. Rich V

yeap the b-61 "silver bullet" is configuable from a yeild of 300 tons up to 450,000 tons.

Quoted: If it were a KE weapon from orbit...wouldn't it be easily seen even during the daytime...like a big meteor? Quoted: Cover story for a test of a small pure fusion warhead prehaps? That or an orbitaly droped kinetic energy penetrator. We have so much data on shock effect in harden structures it doesn't make any sense on why we would have to restablish a baseline with conventional explosives...I don't know what we are playing with right now at the Nevada test site, but I feel very confident in saying it isn't what they claim it to be.

Well there would be a contrail, but assuming that it worked as it theoretically should it shouldn't be shedding any material except prehaps a small ammount of ablated thermal sheild so there shouldn't be much of a contrail.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Just a thought, but could this really be a test of a secret "Rods of God" weapons system? Pray tell, what is a 'Rods of God' weapon???......??? During the quadrenial defense reveiw one of the weapons systems on the wish list was a kinetic energy penetrator satilite. Basically what it is a cluster of 1200-2400lbs ceramic cased depleted uranium darts that would be fired from the launch satilite at a set of GPS cordinates. During rentry it would acheive around mach 20 as it hit the ground, slicing through rock, concrete, and stainless steel like a hot knife through butter. In sheer force it would be a near nuclear effect in the kiloton range. The tricky thing about engineering such a system though is keeping the projectile intact in the face of the thermal stresses. If the penetrator vaporizes and becomes an ionized plasma it will just disperse and have a negliable effect on a surface target other then turning the first few centimeters of soil into glass. This is a fantastic concept!!! Are you suggesting that we already have such a delivery platform in place?? (In orbit) If so, how and when might we have gotten it there??? Inquireing minds want to know!!!......

www.aviationnow.com/avnow/search/autosuggest.jsp?docid=591587&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aviationnow.com%2Favnow%2Fnews%2Fchannel_awst_story.jsp%3Fview%3Dstory%26id%3Dnews%2F030606p1.xml]aviationnow.com/avnow/search/autosuggest.jsp?docid=591587&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aviationnow.com%2Favnow%2Fnews%2Fchannel_awst_story.jsp%3Fview%3Dstory%26id%3Dnews%2F030606p1.xml

This is how we likley put a whole toy box full of fun surprises into low Earth orbit. If a TSTO using a boron slury fuel is shelved makes you wonder what it is that we are playing with now? Maybe someone in the black world has found the trick to building a free positron laser and we are flying anti-matter catylized fusion powered SSTOs from undisclosed places.



*repeatedly edited in a vain attempt to use board code to make my text hotlinked.

Well there would be a contrail, but assuming that it worked as it theoretically should it shouldn't be shedding any material except prehaps a small ammount of ablated thermal sheild so there shouldn't be much of a contrail.

I thought contrails were due to condensation as the result of compressed air.


Bomber