Rods From God Space Weapon

Maybe not WMD like nukes but as space based weapons. I can't see the UN or Any country even the USA not being worried about any type of space based weapon

+ I was thinking of a strike with all 8-16? Rods at the same time

Kinetic energy....

you sooooo scary

reply to post by springtime


It would be the same as launching 8 to 16 Tomahawk missiles at the same time. All conventional and not consider a WMD.

Also the benefit of a space based weapon is that it reduces response time. With an intercontinental ballistic missile, you get a warning as soon as the missile is launched into space. And you have time to start countermeasures as the missile separates in it's second stage and begins the downward descent.

With a space based weapon, the time of detection is dramatically reduced. You will only be able to detect an incoming threat after it's already headed right for it's target on the downward descent.

The only countermeasure would be to track the weapon platform and take it out with a missile. But that is something that would only be done AFTER it is actually used in order to maintain international relations.

Did the USAF ever say if they would or wouldn't volatile the UN outer space treaty. Every I don't see them as WMD
But I do see other people the like them

Originally posted by ANNED
I have heard of a posable enhancement to the rods from god. by filling a hollow area in the tungsten rod with lithium deuteride there is a posable chance that you would have a non nuclear hydrogen bomb.with little radiation.

Not even a ghost of a chance. Li6D requires several things to fuse. You're missing...all of them.

Can a X-37B like craft be used to fire rods?

There is an X-37 payload that has this technology.

Originally posted by dodecagon
So, we have a X-37 orbiting- with a 7'x4' payload bay and nobody thinks we have a stash of rods in there?

Its exactly what they've been looking for- a way to get a weapon delivered anywhere in the world in an hour. You don't have to carry a lot of them- the X-37 doesn't have a problem landing to reup and doesn't have to power it into space anyway- let a Delta II handle that.

The money to get it into space is already spent- they WILL have that little orbiter up as much as they can, might as well bring along a toy. GPS and software being what they are, its seems a matter of relative ease to get Thor to work- I bet the challenge is in the material science and not the aerodynamics. This is a weapon that is used as a complete surprise and only for dire situations.

You don't hit a tank with Thor, you take out the leader of a country,an aircraft carrier or a fortified base with it, maybe in order to stop (or start) a war.

Makes sense to me. The payload doors are the right size, the radar and gps are there and all the right geeks are watching the right monitors...

I wonder if that hit on Syria was really a "Rod From God".

Originally posted by Xeven
I wonder if that hit on Syria was really a "Rod From God".

I don't think we would share such a cool toy, especially with Israel. I do wonder about the mysterious explosion at the Bid Kaneh (Iranian)missile base last year. No missile debris (other than the ones destroyed) and Iran never announced a cause, admittedly that doesn't mean much. Somehow that got pinned on Mossad, but I have to think even they would have a hard time getting inside a base like that with the materials needed to utterly destroy an entire base.

The explosion at that base registered high on the Richter scale and was felt a long way away.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

I recently had a conversation with a friend in the aerospace industry about this subject, we came to the following conclusions:

* All space-faring nations possess the technology to implement a Rods weapons system.
* All space-faring nations mine enough tungsten each year that a Rods weapons program would not produce a significant drain on tungsten supply.
* A single rod would weigh approximately 10 tons according to the suggested dimensions, an Atlas V rocket could launch several rods at once.
* Rods systems would be placed into the same orbits as spy satellites to achieve global coverage.
* Rods weapons platforms would be visually indistinguishable from normal spy satellites, with the exception of their unusually high thermal stability (due to their great mass) which could conceivably be shielded from ground observers.

Originally posted by Xeven
There is an X-37 payload that has this technology.

edit on 5-5-2013 by Xeven because: (no reason given)

That is unlikely, as the X-37 is too small to carry a rod inside its payload bay, it would be more efficient to launch a dedicated platform instead of strapping it to a reusable shuttle.

There have been rumours however that the X-37 is being used to inspect other nation's spy satellites. Given that a Rods weapons platform would look exactly like a spy satellite, it could be possible that the US airforce is using the X-37 to check for chinese and russian Rod weapons systems.

If we have deployed a Rods weapon system it will have had to have been within the last several years. I'm confident that if such a system had been in place prior to 9/11 it would have been used against Iraq during the invasion; the administration at the time simply would not have been able to restrain itself.

Originally posted by bubbler
I recently had a conversation with a friend in the aerospace industry about this subject, we came to the following conclusions:

* All space-faring nations possess the technology to implement a Rods weapons system.
* All space-faring nations mine enough tungsten each year that a Rods weapons program would not produce a significant drain on tungsten supply.
* A single rod would weigh approximately 10 tons according to the suggested dimensions, an Atlas V rocket could launch several rods at once.
* Rods systems would be placed into the same orbits as spy satellites to achieve global coverage.
* Rods weapons platforms would be visually indistinguishable from normal spy satellites, with the exception of their unusually high thermal stability (due to their great mass) which could conceivably be shielded from ground observers.

It also means that everybody who has such capability has probably looked into the possibility and concluded that it is not technically or strategically desirable.

The essential problem is accuracy. This requires the same level of technology as ICBM guidance. ICBM's have very good and precise star monitoring systems, ring laser gyros etc, etc. You have to have very accurate maps of gravitational gradients (slight differences in gravitational potential due to non-uniform crust, ice, ocean currents etc) and even with all that (and decades of technological R&D in USA and USSR) ICBM's get 100-200 meter accuracy. (And that is heroic!) Maybe now GPS would help a little bit but the problem is really severe.

That's because they are coming down so extremely fast. On re-entry, it takes about 3 seconds to go from stratosphere altitude to target level. A Rod can't mitigate this because its entire military use is with its kinetic energy. So you have to point extremely accurately while in orbit in space, and then just hope when you fall down. That's what the "ballistic" means. You hope that all the buffeting and extreme heat and everything in a freaking orbital re-entry won't push you off-course that much.

So, now with a Rod, you have a technological development and cost similar to ICBM's, but with military yields not much larger than a far cheaper air-dropped explosive, and substantially worse accuracy than a modern guided conventional stand-off weapon.

What's it good for? Really, just surprise, as you could area attack an otherwise denied airspace area where your opponent had good air defense. But really, what happens after that? How does it accomplish a military or political goal? You spend $200 million (after a few billion of R&D) and you blow up a small area, and if it were a hard target, you could well have missed.

It's just a very very expensive way of pissing somebody off, but not advancing your cause. At least when the Japanese attacked in 1941 they degraded their enemy's military capability substantially.

(Oh, and by the way there are ground telescopes in space-technical nations which can image low-orbit satellites, so somebody could figure out what it was).

It's better as a James Bond villain mcguffin, than a real capability, which is why nobody has deployed this as part of their strategy. A stratospheric stealth dirigible drone (if you can make one) hauling JDAMs would be better and much cheaper.

I have to say something

So much bs in this thread.
Ok, someone asked if this was a darpa program, yes it was.
It was originally known as "project crowbar", developed in the early 80's.
It was originally envisioned as a counter to the expected massive armor based offensives of a soviet invasion if western Europe.
In it's real world configuration, the rods were roughly three feet long and 2" in dia. and were to launched via artillery missiles and were an unguided mass attack sort of weapon. Imagine the rods falling like arrows during a medieval battle.
They wouldn't need to go orbital to attain enough kinetic energy to punch through the top of any armored vehicle.
The larger version was dreamed up later as an anti shipping weapon, with a penetrator 4"-6"in dia. and six feet long. This system was intended to be an orbital platform, a penetrator of this mass falling from orbit would he able to completely penetrate any know ship.
Just as an aside the airforce launched the largest orbital payload ever in 2006.


A later version of the anti armor system was proposed to use laser designation as guidance, but at the time the laser range was so short that an assignment to a designation team would have been a suicide mission.

Originally posted by punkinworks10
I have to say something

So much bs in this thread.
Ok, someone asked if this was a darpa program, yes it was.
It was originally known as "project crowbar", developed in the early 80's.
It was originally envisioned as a counter to the expected massive armor based offensives of a soviet invasion if western Europe.
In it's real world configuration, the rods were roughly three feet long and 2" in dia. and were to launched via artillery missiles and were an unguided mass attack sort of weapon. Imagine the rods falling like arrows during a medieval battle.
They wouldn't need to go orbital to attain enough kinetic energy to punch through the top of any armored vehicle.

That's nothing like a Rod from God. And what energy would they have? they would have no more than the same energy as the artillery shell which launched them.

Nothing like this would work. Virtually all of them would miss without guidance. MRLS without terminal guidance and explosive? What does work is aircraft and helicopters with precision guided munitions. Apache and A-10 were designed to counter Warsaw Pact tanks, protected by F-16 and F-15 getting air superiority.


| The larger version was dreamed up later as an anti shipping weapon, with a penetrator 4"-6"in dia. and six feet long. This system was intended to be an orbital platform, a penetrator of this mass falling from orbit would he able to completely penetrate any know ship.

An attack submarine with a torpedo can do this. A B-2 at 50,000 ft with PGM's should work great against surface ships, and be much more accurate.

| Just as an aside the airforce launched the largest orbital payload ever in 2006.

Come on. Larger than Skylab which took a Saturn V? 77 metric tons to orbit.

"An attack submarine with a torpedo can do this. A B-2 at 50,000 ft with PGM's should work great against surface ships, and be much more accurate. "


Right, but they can't deliver it anywhere in the world within an hour. Thor (and the smaller rod version) is a solution to the Prompt Global Strike problem- no ballistic trajectories, no treaties or bans to complicate and the infrastructure to support it is there. I'd concede that your tactical arguments are strong- not a lot of bang for the buck until you consider PGS.

How is controlling a falling rod at orbital speeds with fins and a laser painted target harder than getting the Waverider to fly for 4 minutes at Mach 6 or whatever it was. Barely any moving parts to the rod and the targeting systems are well developed- sure its some math but most of it is done before its ever dropped.

Originally posted by dodecagon
How is controlling a falling rod at orbital speeds with fins and a laser painted target harder than getting the Waverider to fly for 4 minutes at Mach 6 or whatever it was. Barely any moving parts to the rod and the targeting systems are well developed- sure its some math but most of it is done before its ever dropped.

Regular PGM's with aerodynamic actuators going at mach 1 or 2 instead of 25 have the opportunity for dynamic course correction feedback.

Rods don't have any fins or sensors. You can't. It's the same as an ICBM re-entry vehicle. Orbital speeds mean descent from stratosphere to ground in 3 seconds. You have no opportunity to look---any sensor is burnt up and blinded by re-entry heat. All comm to GPS is blocked. Any fin is ripped off and the stump burnt off.

This is what an ICBM does. The requirements on aiming are stupendous. And you aim 15 minutes prior while in orbit. You orient in space, calculate and hope and then you fall where you fall. The jet stream can push you off quite a bit and you can't do anything about it.

reply to post by dodecagon


Since a Thor weapon would already be space based, laser guidance would not be the way to go. Instead, a much better alternative would be GPS guidance.

Like what they do with JDAM munitions. They take a standard bomb and attach a tail section with a GPS navigation package inside. It could also be done to a giant tungsten rod.

If you can take potential friendly fire casualties out of the equation, it is the way to go.

The only problem with designing such a system would be make it cost effective and capable of withstanding the tremendous heat that the tungsten rod has to endure.

Originally posted by allenidaho
reply to post by dodecagon

 

Since a Thor weapon would already be space based, laser guidance would not be the way to go. Instead, a much better alternative would be GPS guidance.

Like what they do with JDAM munitions. They take a standard bomb and attach a tail section with a GPS navigation package inside. It could also be done to a giant tungsten rod.

Yes, but it wouldn't work with a rod which is entering from orbit.

A gravity bomb which is dropped speeds up to its terminal speed determined by mass, air resistance and geometry.

An orbital re-entry vehicle is slowing down, way way way down, to its terminal speed like a meteorite. Notice how meteorites made of nickel-iron are vaporized. Is any part of a JDAM casing or fin ever vaporized from the extreme heat? Do JDAM's glow intensely white-bright from their tremendous speed as they fall? No.

ICBM re-entry vehicles do. As would a Rod.

ICBM re-entry vehicles are designed to be long, skinny and super tough because they are trying to avoid slowing down as much as possible. In the early days (early 60's) they needed to use blunt

The only problem with designing such a system would be make it cost effective and capable of withstanding the tremendous heat that the tungsten rod has to endure.

That is 100% of the problem. The physical conditions are very far away from a JDAM. About as far away as a submarine torpedo is from a ballistic missile.

Originally posted by darpa999
Is there any PDF file that I can I download detailing this military space weapon project?
Do any of you know the official "Project" name for this type of space weapon?

Did this Space weapon was developed by the US Air Force or by DARPA?

www.popsci.com...

Thanks

I was thinking about this the other day, how the U.S. Military used them when the first went into Iraq,

1.What ever happend to these things?

2. What in the SAM HILL ARE THEY?

reply to post by ATSWATCHER


They were """invented""" by a science fiction writer who had the ear of Ronald Reagan.

They were never seriously tested or investigated, much less any hardware built.