Hyper-kinetic space weaponry?

[cthulu2016]

Have we ever experimented with kinetic bombs -- heavy things that would be sent up into space and then strike down on Earth from space accelerating down and hitting the ground at incredible speeds?

Essentially streamlined guided metorites.

I'm guessing the guidance would be almost impossible, given the unpredictability of the tremendous atmospheric turbulence, but it's a way to generate tremedous explosive yield without crossing the geopolitically sensitive nuclear threshold.

Since DU is so smart, I thought I'd ask.

[Hugabear]

1. Just what we need, more ways to kill people

I'm sure that's on the Pentagon drawing board

[sorcrow]

2. Google Rail guns

Not quite what you describe, but a powerful kinetic weapon.

Regards,
Crow

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. Its out there, I remember the article.

It was somebody's idea of bunker buster: bring down this thing from space in a guided way, no worries about nuclear treaties. Maybe you could even guide big objects that were already floating around, no elevating something huge into orbit.

But I gotta say, I hate that kind of thing. All the intelligence in the world subverted to the cause of throwing a big rock, its paradigmatic of everything I hate about the subversion of science to military ends without the military mind being enlightened by the science. The first objective of scientists should be getting their sponsors to question whether throwing a big rock is really the smartest way to achieve their security objectives.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Attacking people from space is "geopolitically sensitive" too

The Outer Space Treaty forbids 'weapons of mass destruction' in orbit.

But I'm not sure what "tremedous explosive yield" you expect to be able to get; lifting large weights up into orbit is very difficult.

[backscatter712]

13. It's the same principle as a bullet.

Bullets are very small, but go very fast, thus are able to cause lethal amounts of damage.

A kinetic energy dart doesn't have to be enormous (though some of the plans have them being pretty big) - it just has to be fast, and being launched from an orbital platform, it's got more than enough speed - Mach 25+. Anything it hits will be vaporized!

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. 'Anything'? So a 1oz dart will vaporize a mouintain?

No, size is critical. If you want "tremedous explosive yield", you need a lot of mass as well as velocity. And while you say "Mach 25+", the trick would be to get that speed at ground level, after going through a few hundred miles of atmosphere, while still being able to steer it. In #12, you compare it to the Space Shuttle; but the whole point is the Shuttle steered after having slowed itself, by presenting its flat undersurface, during re-entry.

[backscatter712]

17. A projectile of a few hundred pounds will be quite enough to flatten a building.

Something powerful enough to destroy a mountain is probably overkill. The .mil these days like precise destruction (even though that's a contradiction in terms.)

And you have a point in that these projectiles won't be guided in in the same way as the Space Shuttle - you'd have to have extreme precision at the start of the process, though I'd argue that if the aerodynamics are set up correctly, and the outer shell of the projectile can withstand the heat (the heat-shielding outer shell would be quite an engineering challenge), I'd say it can be done.

And in fact, if you can get a projectile that weighs hundreds of pounds up in space and have the tech to drop it on a target as small as a building, well, what's preventing you from putting a nuclear device in that projectile and having the capacity to flatten a city with a 15 minute or less lead-time?

And THAT is why you'll never see these weapons deployed anytime soon - if the U.S. starts the engineering process for these weapons, all the other nuclear and wanna-be-nuclear powers will go apeshit.

[bluerum]

5. Getting something that massive into orbit may not be worth the effort.

I mean, just to drop it back down again. And it would need some kind of orbiting craft to house it and send it on its way when it's time to kill someone.

Seems like a hell of a way to waste money.

[stockholmer]

6. Rods from God

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god

This technology is very far out—in miles and years. A pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the targeting and communications platform while the other carries numerous tungsten rods—up to 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter—that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes’ notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling at 36,000 feet per second—comparable to the speed of a meteor. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it’s buried deep underground. (The two-platform configuration permits the weapon to be “reloaded” by just launching a new set of rods, rather than replacing the entire system.)


The concept of kinetic-energy weapons has been around ever since the RAND Corporation proposed placing rods on the tips of ICBMs in the 1950s; the satellite twist was popularized by sci-fi writer Jerry Pournelle. Though the Pentagon won’t say how far along the research is, or even confirm that any efforts are underway, the concept persists. The “U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan,” published by the Air Force in November 2003, references “hypervelocity rod bundles” in its outline of future space-based weapons, and in 2002, another report from RAND, “Space Weapons, Earth Wars,” dedicated entire sections to the technology’s usefulness.

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Office of Net Assessment (the center of the war machine's hive mind)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html

Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, fiddles with his security badge, squints, looks away, smiles, and finally speaks in a voice that sounds like Gene Hackman trying not to wake anybody. Known as Yoda in defense circles, Marshall doesn't need to shout to be heard. Named director of the Office of Net Assessment by Richard Nixon and reappointed by every president since, the DOD's most elusive official has become one of its most influential. Today, Marshall - along with his star proteges Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - is drafting President Bush's plan to upgrade the military. Supporters believe the force he envisions will be faster and more lethal; critics say it relies on unproven technology. As US troops gathered overseas, Marshall sat for a rare interview.................

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more goodies of death

Metal Storm 36 Barrel Prototype-One Million Rounds per Minute Rate of Fire

Boston Dynamics BigDog Robot - the Army mule

[cthulu2016]

10. I remember metalstorm!

That was in the news around the same time as MOAB. Right around when we were really bogging down in Iraq.

[pokerfan]

7. Rod from God

If so-called “Rods from God”—an informal nickname of untraceable origin—ever do materialize, it won’t be for at least 15 years. Launching heavy tungsten rods into space will require substantially cheaper rocket technology than we have today. But there are numerous other obstacles to making such a system work. Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org, argues that the rods’ speed would be so high that they would vaporize on impact, before the rods could penetrate the surface. Furthermore, the “absentee ratio”—the fact that orbiting satellites circle the Earth every 100 minutes and so at any given time might be far from the desired target—would be prohibitive. A better solution, Pike argues, is to pursue the original concept: Place the rods atop intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would slow down enough during the downward part of their trajectory to avoid vaporizing on impact. ICBMs would also be less expensive and, since they’re stationed on Earth, would take less time to reach their targets. “The space-basing people seem to understand the downside of space weapons,” Pike says—among them, high costs and the difficulty of maintaining weapon platforms in orbit. “But I’ll still bet you there’s a lot of classified work on this going on right now.”

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god

[cthulu2016]

8. Yeah, like that

The reason for my question was that the US seems to be up against the practical limits of high-explosives in our bunker-busting endeavors and I was curious what other shenanigans we may be up to.

[BrentWil]

9. We have treaties that prevent this...

We can't actually put guns in space, at least currently. Space is currently a platform for intel.

[pokerfan]

14. It violates the 'spirit' of the treaties

As if treaties have ever stopped us before. It only took us about five years to violate the Black Hills treaty once we discovered we had given the Sioux land with gold.

Although the SALT II (1979) prohibited the deployment of orbital weapons of mass destruction, it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional weapons. The system is not prohibited by either the Outer Space Treaty nor the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Also, such bundles of metal are not specifically disallowed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which explicitly prohibits only deploying nuclear weapons in space. The rods, however, would violate the spirit of the more general Outer Space Treaty.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/12/INGS6HID5A1.DTL

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ratified by the major powers, does ban nuclear weapons in space. Its Article IV says: "States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner."

But significantly it does not mention other weapons. Therefore, although space has so far been free of weapons based there, that might not last.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6290525.stm

[chrisa]

11. I would imagine it would be somewhat pointless, when

you could just fire a missile at a low trajectory for the same effect.

[backscatter712]

12. I'd say the reentry guidance isn't so hard.

The Shuttle, for instance, did a series of high-bank turns during re-entry to burn off excess speed and steer itself to Cape Kennedy.

And we've already had plenty of experience with guidance when it comes to things like ICBM nuclear warheads.

Not to say there won't be stiff engineering challenges, but I think it can be done.

It's the political obstacles that will keep this from being built. It's one thing to have a kinetic-energy weapon up there, but if you can put one of those up there, it's not a big leap to putting nukes up there, and the mere possibility will cause a huge shitstorm among the nuclear powers and the would-be-nuclear powers, resulting in a nasty arms race. So the safe money says people will talk about it, and maybe some blueprints and designs and even a few experiments will be put together, but an operational orbital kinetic energy weapons system will never be deployed, and rightfully so.

[jberryhill]

16. "Brilliant Pebbles" and "Smart Rocks" were the previous brands

Getting a kinetic weapon through the atmosphere is the hard part. If you are going to go through that much effort, you might as well make it go boom.

[TheWraith]

18. Theorized yes, experimented no.

The term you're looking for is "Rods from God," which is a theoretical design for a guided "missile" system from space--big chunks of tungsten the size of telephone poles capable of punching through mountains. Of course, with today's technology and ability to lift things into space, it's hideously impractical. The price you'd pay for to launch even one, let alone the cost of designing and building it, would buy you a small fleet of cruise missiles.