Kinetic Bombardent Weapon

Hi all,
After reading about Kinetic Bombardment Weapons any nations seeking to deploy such weapons would need a heavy lift launch vehicle to launch the targeting satellite and weapon launch platform to orbit. So would any of the current heavy lift launch vehicles i.e the American Delta IV Heavy,the European Ariane 5 ES and the Russian Proton-M be capable of lifting such a payload and putting it into orbit?

Rods From God?

Expensive. Ground based penetration systems working pretty well.

It would be easier and cheaper to send a rocket up, latch onto an asteroid on a close fly-by and guide it to target. It's all in concept in the novel "Footfall."

a reply to: Lazarus Short

Great book...

a reply to: Conspiracyskeptic

P
K = e

P is potential but is energy, therefore it is possible to have potential weapons. The potents can become kinetic and thus, weaponry.

a reply to: NJE777

Sorry i did not include the math:

P 16
-k 11= e5

a reply to: Conspiracyskeptic

Well between the Russians and Americans, they put a space station up there, so I would say kinetic "Rods from God" would be a minimal task, and likely already up there if they exist.

True tin-foilers actually think the recent explosions in China were caused by this as a warning from the US to China....lol

Aren't space based weapons systems like this, outlawed by some treaty or another? I might be mistaken though.

originally posted by: PorteurDeMort
Aren't space based weapons systems like this, outlawed by some treaty or another? I might be mistaken though.

Only if stored in space. IE placed in orbit.

Like ICBMs rods from god that are just passing through space on there way to the target are not outlawed.

Kinetic Bombardment Weapons may be something as simple as concrete filled bomb casing with a GPS/laser guidance system.
www.nbcnews.com...
defensetech.org...

concrete wrapped in steel will Fubar a tank in a big way.

We already have those weapons. Space is weaponized. Its been that way since the Reagan Administration. Remember Star Wars?

a reply to: Conspiracyskeptic

I was thinking about shaped charges and armour shape and the analogys with aerodynamics' and hydrodynamics earlier but I digress.

I believe the US already has and probably has had for maybe two decades the ability to launch payloads into space without a regular rocket launch system, many of the DUMB's are actually launch facility's, they use magnetic launch systems in a vacuum basically a little like a rail gun, the advantage was no or very little thermal signature at the dark launch site were such launches would be made late at night usually along with jet activity to cover for any sonic boom audible at nearby ground level's though they are only suitable for solid state hardened unmanned launch and deployment of hardened devices, the devices have there own orbital correction and positioning rocket's to be used external to the atmosphere.

The idea was to place in orbit a radar shielded shroud of tactical kinetic and potentially atomic warheads for use as EMP and kinetic impactors.

While I have no doubt the US does have this capability I am not certain to what scale and if they implemented this shroud defence/offence capability but I know that I would have as it grant's them the potential to station anti missile systems and other military tactical asset's in orbit over hostile nations and the ability to therefore target the hostile nations launch sites, missiles and infrastructure before they even get off the ground or into the upper atmosphere as well as the ability to take out logistical asset's under the cover of convention air strikes (to hide the real strike) however the use of these assets would still be prohibitively expensive so they would likely only be used against a major aggressive power such as a nuclear armed power, AKA north korea and China should they start aggressive action's and get out of control.

Kinetic weapon's are also excellent deep bunker busters as they send a shock wave down into the bedrock actually more forcefully than most nuclear deviced with the exception of Crust Cracker large multi kiloton surface ground effect nuclear devices and also have no or very little nuclear fallout (though they may use depleted uranium as a mass delivery with a tungsten dart delivery system to increase the mass impact force).


More humble kinetic technology has been around for a long time, a bullet is the most obviouse though most people don't realise the bullet is not the cause of most gun shot injury but rather the shock wave that the bullet has and this causes an effect called Cavitation in the body, this is the impact causes a rippleing shock to radiate out around the impact and this ruptures and tears tissue and internal organ's.

During the first gulf war when the Iraq's fled from Kuwait city it was a turkey shoot to coin an American phrase, the Mod and the US used it as a testing ground to evaluate some already old weapons that had not seen battle field deployment such as a missile that uses a kinetic head (similar to a bodkin arrow head or steel punch) that pierces the steel of the the Iraqi T75's like a ling thin stilletto and delivered a small sphere of mercury into the tank, this sphere of mercury was placed around a small but high explosive charge which would then detonate inside the vehicle blast the mercury outward as a plasma inside the vehicle literally liquifying the crew but causing minimal damage to the tank and so making it potentially salvable and reusable once you had hosed the remains of the previous occupants out and replaced any damaged (usually plastic, glass and organic) internal componants.

originally posted by: PorteurDeMort
Aren't space based weapons systems like this, outlawed by some treaty or another? I might be mistaken though.

There was not acutally a treaty but I do think there was a non proliferation Agreement back in the 70's about the same time the US and Russia agreed to not pursue there Neutron bomb development as it was seen as a weapon of first strike, essentially a nuclear device with a low kinetic yield and low post blast harmful radiation but at the initial blast the device would output a high intensity stream of neutrons and these neutrons would pass through and smash long chain molecules so organic material would be essentially liquefied at close range and tissue damage and complications would occur at longer range, essentially the neutron bomb could depopulate a country while leaving the building's standing and any none organic machinery undamaged (tyres and plastic etc would be vulnerable but not metals or crystalline structures).

Forget what you read about the neutron bomb being invented later it was hypothetical at least in the 60's and I am pretty sure both the US and the Soviets had some in there stockpiles when they stopped development, they are more dangerous as they can be catagorised as weapon's of first strike and in discriminatory anti personnel weapon's.

a reply to: LABTECH767

The neutron bomb was designed as a defense against large scale Soviet armored invasion of West Germany---it was anticipated that they would need to use it over allied territory. The neutrons would be able to penetrate tank armor sufficiently.

a reply to: mbkennel


That may be the truth but it was actually a specifically anti personnel device, yes it would penetrate armour at the level's then used (not certain it would penetrate the later armour developed based on British Chobham armour under shared technology by the States though, Chobham and whatever the yank's call there version is a composite/laminate armour and has developed through several iterations since it was invented as well as being used now by many first world armed forces, the Yank's added a layer of depleted uranium to there version of it with the notion that it could stop or at least help to mitigate the impact of depleted uranium shell's that the soviet's or any other perceived threatening power may fire at them, I do not know if the British army uses this addition or the German's army as they both have political reason's not to.

That said though Depleted Uranium while being mildly radioactive itself (and it has been linked to a number of diseases amongst ex service personell in the states) it is a very dense material with a tightly packed atomic structure and just maybe it would have screened a high enough percentage of an air burst neutron device radiation to make such a device ineffective.

It was also projected as an anti civilian weapon, remember what one side developed they always assumed the other side also had the capability or had indeed also developed as like any race they were often seen to be neck and neck which of course drove there paranoia and it was also felt that openly owning such devices could be regarded as a provocation and could precipitate a more dangerous move in the arms race, we know today that this was bunk though as the soviets actually lagged the west technologically by quite a way except in there own alternate development's which had followed different path's such as there radar weapon.

Now you know of course what harmonic resonance is, you cause an oscilation that builds, now in audio circuits a simple demonstration is the high pitched scream you hear when you take a microphone too close to a loudspeaker and the input is feeding back the output which is then being amplified, now of course it reached a point were the circuit amplifier can no longer amplify it and on an oscilloscope it is shown to have reached the maximum level the amplifier can produce of course but in the real world harmonic resonance mean's something else.

Now we all know how oscillations can cause metal fatigue in the metal structure of an aircraft, well you can produce it at a much lower level by tuning a high intensity radio signal to the inverse complex conjugate of the frequency's that the metal can not absorb, the metal get's hot then it melt's.

The Soviets had an experimental radar array in the Ukraine (probably powered by Chernobyl), the idea was to use a long range but relatively normal strength radar signal or very broad spectrum of radio waves and to transmit them at an incoming target, aircraft, missile, satellite etc then to take the signal that was bounced back and this provided the necessary wavelengths.

They then took the inverse complex conjugate of this signal and passed this to an extremely high powered emitter (which required a nuclear generator to produce the high enough levels of amplitude necessary) this was then used to beam this atomic harmonic resonance inducing signal at the incoming target which would and did on several of there tests actually disintegrate in flight.

Of course that was taking electronic warfare to the extreme's and of course radar absorbent material meant it was a white elephant for them but it was still a devastating weapon if not a practical one.