Kinetic bombardment

A kinetic bombardment or a kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile,
where the destructive force comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds. The concept originated
during the Cold War.

The typical depiction of the tactic is of a satellite containing a magazine of tungsten rods and a directional thrust system. (In science
fiction, the weapon is often depicted as being launched from a spaceship, instead of a satellite). When a strike is ordered, the launch
vehicle would brake[1] one of the rods out of its orbit and into a suborbital trajectory that intersects the target. As the rod approaches
periapsis and the target due to gravity, it picks up immense speed until it begins decelerating in the atmosphere and reaches terminal
velocity shortly before impact. The rods would typically be shaped to minimizeair resistance and maximize terminal velocity.

Kinetic bombardment has the advantage of being able to deliver projectiles from a very high angle at a very high speed, making them
extremely difficult to defend against. In addition, projectiles would not require explosive warheads, and—in the simplest designs—
would consist entirely of solid metal rods, giving rise to the common nickname "Rods from God".[2] Disadvantages include the
technical difficulties of ensuring accuracy and thehigh costs of positioning ammunition in orbit.

Contents
Legality
Real life concepts and theories
In science fiction
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Legality
Neither SALT II (1979), nor the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,[3][4] nor the Outer Space Treaty explicitly prohibit the deployment in
space of kinetic bombardment systems. However, SALT II and the Outer Space Treaty do prohibit weapons of mass destruction,[4]
T [3]
and kinetic bombardment would violate the spirit of the Outer Space reaty.

Real life concepts and theories

During the Vietnam War, there was limited use of the Lazy Dog bomb, a steel projectile shaped like a conventional bomb but only
about 25.4 mm (1") long and 9.525 mm (3/8") diameter. A piece of sheet metal was folded to make the fins and welded to the rear of
the projectile. These were dumped from aircraft onto enemy troops and had the same effect as a machine gun fired vertically.[5][6]
Observers visiting a battlefield after an attack said it looked like the ground had been 'tenderized' using a gigantic fork. Bodies had
been penetrated longitudinally from shoulder to lower abdomen.

Project Thor is an idea for a weapons system that launches telephone pole-sized kinetic projectiles made from tungsten from Earth's
orbit to damage targets on the ground. Jerry Pournelle originated the concept while working in operations research at Boeing in the
.[7][8]
1950s before becoming a science-fiction writer
The system most often described is "an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance".
The system described in the 2003 United States Air Force report was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten
, with impact speeds ofMach 10.[9][3][10]
rods, that are satellite controlled, and have global strike capability

The time between deorbit and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the
system would have a worldwide range. There would be no need to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles.

The idea is that the weapon would naturally contain a large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, at least 8 kilometers
per second. As the rod would approach Earth it would necessarily lose most of the velocity, but the remaining energy would cause
considerable damage. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.[10] These designs are envisioned
as a bunker buster.[3][11] As the name suggests, the 'bunker buster' is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker
. With 6–8 satellites
on a given orbit, a target could be hit within 12–15 minutes from any given time, less than half the time taken by an ICBM and
without the launch warning. Such a system could also be equipped with sensors to detect incoming anti-ballistic missile-type threats
and relatively light protective measures to use against them (e.g. Hit-T
o-Kill Missiles or megawatt-class chemical laser).

In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 Air Force report above, a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has
a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite)[12] . The mass of such a cylinder is itself
greater than 9 tons, so the practical applications of such a system are limited to those situations where its other characteristics provide
a clear and decisive advantage—a conventional bomb/warhead of similar weight to the tungsten rod, delivered by conventional
means, provides similar destructive capability and is far more practical and cost fective.
ef

The highly elongated shape and high mass are to enhance sectional density and therefore minimize kinetic energy loss due to air
friction and maximize penetration of hard or buried targets. The larger device is expected to be quite effective at penetrating deeply
gets.[13]
buried bunkers and other command and control tar

The weapon would be very hard to defend against. It has a very high closing velocity and small radar cross-section. Launch is
difficult to detect. Any infrared launch signature occurs in orbit, at no fixed position. The infrared launch signature also has a much
smaller magnitude compared to a ballistic missile launch. One drawback of the system is that the weapon's sensors would almost
certainly be blind during atmospheric reentry due to the plasma sheath that would develop ahead of it, so a mobile target could be
difficult to hit if it performed an unexpected maneuver. The system would also have to cope with atmospheric heating from re-entry,
[14]
which could melt non-tungsten components of the weapon.

The phrase "Rods from God" is also used to describe the same concept.[15] An Air Force report called them "hypervelocity rod
bundles".[2]

In science fiction
In the mid-1960s, popular science interest in orbital mechanics led to a number of science fiction stories which explored their
implications. Among these was The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein in which the citizens of the Moon bombard the
Earth with rocks wrapped in iron containers which are in turn fired from an
electromagnetic launch systemat Earth-based targets.

In the 1970s and 1980s this idea was refined in science fiction novels such as Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (the same
Pournelle that first proposed the idea for military use in a non-fiction context), in which aliens use a Thor-type system. During the
1980s and 1990s references to such weapons became a staple of science fiction roleplaying games such as Traveller, Shadowrun and
Heavy Gear (the latter game naming these weapons ortillery, a portmanteau of orbital artillery), as well as visual media including
Babylon 5's "mass drivers" and the filmStarship Troopers, itself an adaptation of a Heinleinnovel of the same name.

The re-purposing of space colonies for use in kinetic bombardment (referred as a "colony drop") is a frequent element of the Gundam
franchise and is central to the plots ofMobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattackand Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory.

A smaller "crowbar" variant is mentioned in David's Sling by Marc Stiegler (Baen, 1988). Set in the Cold War, the story is based on
the use of (relatively inexpensive) information-based "intelligent" systems to overcome an enemy's numerical advantage. The orbital
kinetic bombardment system is used first to destroy the Soviet tank armies that have invaded Europe and then to take out Soviet
ICBM silos prior to a nuclear strike.

In Neal Stephenson's Anathem a kinetic bombardment weapon is deployed from orbit to trigger the eruption of a dormant
volcano.

From the mid-1990s, kinetic weapons as science fiction plot devices appeared in video games. Appearing in Bullfrog Productions'
1996 Syndicate Wars as a player-usable weapon, it also featured prominently in the plot of Tom Clancy's Endwar, Mass Effect 2 and
Call of Duty: Ghosts, to name some.

The Warren Ellis comic Global Frequency (issue #12, "Harpoon", August 2004) featured the threat of kinetic spears, weapons
designed to be dropped from satellites, heat up on re-entry, and strike the ground with the force of a tactical nuke, and as hot as the
edge of the sun. Rather than being a weapon of war, they were depicted as part of a 'die-back' protocol designed to reduce Earth's
human population to a sustainable level.

In Daniel Suarez's book Freedom, a suborbital version of Thor is used composed of many small arrows or spikes for anti-personnel
use.

In James S. A. Corey's The Expanse series, a radical group from within the Belter movement bombards Earth with high-speed
asteroids, killing billions.

In 2013 a kinetic weapon bombardment system consisting of tungsten rods in an orbiting platform, codenamed Project: Zeus, was
featured in the movie G.I. Joe: Retaliation, where it destroys London. However, the movie misrepresented physics by claiming the
rod would not be "launched" or "fired" but merely "dropped". If it were released without force it would orbit the Earth in the same
manner as the platform itself. In order for a rod to fall straight toward the center of Earth, it would need to be launched away from the
station with a tangential velocity equal in magnitude and opposite in direction from the orbiting station. This velocity would be in the
range of approximately 7–8 km/s for satellites inlow earth orbit, however, the actual velocity change needed to merely deorbit within
half an orbit would be much less, likely a few hundred m/s for a low-orbiting satellite, if even that much.

In John Birmingham's Stalin's Hammer (a part of his Axis of Time series), Soviet scientists use 21st century technology obtained from
a fleet thrown back to World War II to create a satellite capable of launching tungsten rods from orbit and launch it by the early
1950s.

In David Weber's Honorverse series, kinetic strike weapons are a standard armament of all space navies that conduct orbit-to-ground
operations. The version used by theRoyal Manticoran Navyis a six-hundred-kilogram iron slug equipped with a small gravitic drive,
capable of variable yields ranging from that of a large artillery shell to an intermediate-yield nuclear device, and packaged in six-shot
satellites that are deployed from starship counter
-missile tubes.

An episode of Justice league featured a satellite-based weapon that combines this with a rail gun which used magnetic coils to attract
and then launch meteors toward the earth's surface.

In Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn trilogy, "kinetic harpoons" are being used to bombard the surface of a planet. The book in
which the event occurs also specifies how the staggering of the harpoons' impact caused the shockwaves from the impacts to resonate
and result in an artificial earthquake.

In the 2008 adventure novel Plague Ship by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul, an elaborate explanation and depiction of a Kinetic
bombardment is described.

In the 28 August 2005 strip of Schlock Mercenary by Howard Taylor, the sentient race Tohdfraug intend to destroy the extant
civilisation on the planet Qlaviql, by bombarding it with "a few thousand depleted uranium projectiles ... no bigger than a roll of
Terran toilet paper", although accelerated to 250Mm/h. [16]

See also
Kinetic energy penetrator
Prompt Global Strike
 Railgun
Brilliant Pebbles
Flechette
Fractional Orbital Bombardment System

References
1. Pelt, Michel van (2005). Space Tourism: Adventures in Earth Orbit and Beyond (https://books.google.com/books?id=
pjiuMbDxsJIC&pg=PA107). Springer Science & Business Media. p. 107.ISBN 978-0-387-40213-0.; - the word
"brake" in this paragraph refers to the act of braking; the fact that by slowing the rod's orbital trajectory
, the satellite
can de-orbit it in order to drop it onto the planet below
.
2. Eric Adams (June 2004)."Rods from God" (http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god). Popular
Science. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
3. John Arquilla (12 March 2006)."RODS FROM GOD / Imagine a bundle of telephone poles hurtling through space at
7,000 mph" (https://archive.is/QldOR). San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original (http://articles.sfgate.co
m/2006-03-12/opinion/17284306_1_rods-nuclear-weapons-outer-space-treaty) on 2013-02-02. Retrieved 25 May
2010. "[Such] bundles of metal are not specifically disallowed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missilereaty,
T which
explicitly prohibits only deploying nuclear weapons in space. The rods, however
, would violate the spirit of the more
general Outer Space Treaty."
4. Paul Reynolds (23 January 2007)."China's space challenge to the US"(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/62905
25.stm). BBC News. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
5. David Karmes (2014).The Patricia Lynn Project: Vietnam War, the Early Years of Air Intelligence (https://books.goog
le.com/books?id=SQrcBQAAQBAJ). iUniverse. The Lazy Dog Bomb (https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=SQrcB
QAAQBAJ&pg=PT142). ISBN 978-1-4917-5228-9.
6. Ralph A Rowley (12 April 2013).Close Air Support In Vietnam (https://books.google.com/books?id=T
cXNBAAAQBA
J). Lulu.com. p. 43 (https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=T
cXNBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA43). ISBN 978-1-939335-12-8.
7. Jonathan Shainin (10 December 2006)."Rods From God" (https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section
3a.t-9.html). New York Times.
8. Jerry Pournelle (6 March 2006)."Chaos Manor Mail" (https://web.archive.org/web/20080828221908/http://www .jerry
pournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail404.html#Thor) . The View from Chaos Manor. Archived from the original
(http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail404.html#Thor)on 28 August 2008.
9. Giuseppe Anzera (18 August 2005)."Star Wars: Empires strike back"(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/G
H18Aa01.html). Asia Times. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
10. Julian Borger (19 May 2005)."Bush likely to back weapons in space"(https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/m
ay/19/spaceexploration.usnews). The Guardian. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
11. Jack Kelly (28 July 2003)."Rods from God" (https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/94403109/). Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette. p. A5.
12. "US Air Force Transformation Flight Plan"(http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/af/af_trans_flightplan_nov03.pdf)
(PDF).
13. History Television, The Universe, season 4, episode 8, "Space Wars"; referring to rod from God
14. Noah Shachtman (20 February 2004)."Pentagon Preps for War in Space" (https://www.wired.com/science/discoveri
es/news/2004/02/62358?currentPage=2). Wired. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
15. Michael Goldfarb (8 June 2005)."The Rods from God" (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/
000/005/700oklkt.asp). The Weekly Standard. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
16. https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-08-28

Further reading
Space Weapons, Earth Wars, RAND Corporation, 2002,ISBN 0-8330-2937-1

External links
 "Rods from God". weeklystandard.com.
"Rods from God". Popular Science. June 2004.
Richard L. Garwin (14 May 2003)."Space Weapons, Not Yet" (PDF).

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kinetic_bombardment&oldid=881593199

"

This page was last edited on 3 February 2019, at 16:21(UTC).

Text is available under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of theWikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.