1 New Air Force motto: "We deliver anywhere in the world in sixty minutes or less, or your next delivery is free!"

2

The problem with the Trident one is that the launch of that variant would look identical to the launch of a nuclear armed one.

Tends to make people jumpy.

3 But if the 2008 test flight is a success

How old is that story?

4 New Air Force motto: "We deliver death and destruction anywhere in the world in sixty minutes or less, or your next delivery is free!"

FIFY

5 "Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated."

Damn!

6 DOH. I forgot to link the NYT piece that references this.

7

You're not going to get SEC employees to surf this site with this kind of pron.

8

Traveling as fast as 13,000 mph, the warheads are filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.

Stop it!  You are getting me all hot and bothered.  Time for a cold shower.

9 I think an old scifi novel called "Foot Fall" had aliens using something like the Trident system on us. We didn't like it.

10 Mach 5; when has to be there on time.

11

I wish our government would put half as much effort into making as fiscally solvent as our military does into killing our enemies.

If they did we would have trillion dollar budget surpluses.

That first desciption sounds scary as shit. 3000 square feet? dear lord.

The second one seems to be aimed at in China's direction, because they have been working on anti aircraft carrier weaponry, and a cruise missle traveling at that speed could knock them out long before they could be launched.

12 Ok.. well, not sure if this helps the "Smart Military" reputation of the blog or not but all I can say is..

Cool..

13

eman, that was Niven and Pournelle I think.  Weren't the alien basically dragging asteroids or something and chunking them at us? And then there was this one gigantic sumbitch that drowned half the humans.

 

It sucked, I remember that.

14

We have hotlines for the Trident issue with those that would be jumpy. 

Otherwise, fire away.

Plus, "tungsten" is one of those words that just sounds cool.

15 2

The problem with the Trident one is that the launch of that variant would look identical to the launch of a nuclear armed one.

Tends to make people jumpy.

Posted by: Spade at April 23, 2010 10:16 AM (7WUru)

http://tinyurl.com/2vk57t2

What if we painted the "Earth Day" symbol of the side of the non-Nuke one? That would help.

16 I'd say we should beat our swords into plowshares, but I don't know what the fuck a plowshare is. It sounds racist.

17 Mmm...tongue-stun...

18 I'd say we should beat our swords into plowshares, but I don't know what the fuck a plowshare is.

It's like a timeshare, I believe. You pay a certain amount for the right to plow a particular top-shelf hooker for a certain number of nights in a year.

19 I guess I'll be the one to say it and suffer the consequences, but I promise I'm not trolling. Do I even trust the government to have weapons such as these anymore? I know I still trust the military but they are controlled by the civilian authorities. All this high tech stuff is really cool in theory, but Man has to control it, and right now I don't trust the Man. Maybe I'm jut being tin-foil hat today; could very well be, but if it hits the fan in the next couple years, what happens with all this stuff?

20 Sounds interesting -- can we field test the new system on the Iranian nuclear reactors?  Oh, yes, and how about taking out their ICBM inventory while we're at it?

21

Love the new Air Force motto guys!

The whole "nuclear" issue here reminds me of how little sense the military can have at times. I remember, for example, there was this ship-attack version of the Tomahawk cruise missle (about 25 years ago). GPS was just coming out, and so this thing was still using some pretty ancient navigation hardware instead. To compensate for it's inaccuracy (which was pretty bad) it had search patterns it would use to find its target.

So - it the midst of a battle where you might want to use this thing - you'd have this mindless robot kamikaze wandering all over the ocean, just looking for anything to blow to smithereens! I think they ultimately cancelled it.

22

I think we should, uhhh, spread the nukes around.  We take some of ours, and give them to everyone.  Then I save their healthcare.  Uhh, then, uhh, world peace. 

 

*goes back to staring at self in mirror*  

23 Let me be clear, we will not use these weapons unless we (and by 'we' I actually mean you guys, the United States) are completely destroyed. For instance, if we (and by 'we', I mean the Islamic Axis) go after Israel, that's cool. Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, the Czechs- same thing. Hate to escalate unnecessarily. Threaten Kenya, however, and you fuckers will fry!

24 18 I'd say we should beat our swords into plowshares, but I don't know what the fuck a plowshare is.

It's like a timeshare, I believe. You pay a certain amount for the right to plow a particular top-shelf hooker for a certain number of nights in a year.

Posted by: Eliot Spitzer at April 23, 2010 10:30 AM (rOd1g)

No a plowshare is part of a Credit default swap. When the idiot that signed up for a monthly mortgage payment that exceeded his annual salary defaults, you get to plow his house under with a bulldozer.

25 Do I even trust the government to have weapons such as these anymore?

Maybe you should enumerate what you're worried about rather than just vaguely saying you 'don't trust' "the Man".

I mean, you trust him with M1A2s and F-15s, but not this? Why?

26 Out of nowhere! Fucking Tungsten!

27 Well, those are definitely going to be part of the Alextopia defense system.

28 O yes, and BTW, let me do a happy dance in honor of the new spam policy!  For some odd reason, I get really irritated when a thread is hijacked by those buffoons seeking customers for their bootleg watches, handbags, DVD's,  etc. 

29 Can it tip islands into the ocean???

30 It sucked, I remember that.

Isn't Foot Fall the one with the elephant aliens in it? Because that both sucked and blew.

31 #25 I know, I know, in a way it's totally irrational, but anymore I don't know if I trust him even with those....we've got a dimwit in office who hate Israel, what is to stop him from aligning with Chavez or some other tin pot like he already has? Then what? Are we gonna march with little signs and complain he doesn't follow the Senate rules? I don't know, maybe this last year has been a bit much for me, and again I know I'm being irrational and passing into Ronbot territory, but this is the world we live in. I guess what I'm saying is it's scary that Obama and the social democrats has control of these weapons.

32

Plus, "tungsten" is one of those words that just sounds cool.~Circa (Insert Year Here)

Rumsfeld opened his fly and revealed his scored tungsten rod.  It was thought that it could obliterate anything within 3000 sq ft.

33 Buried in the new START treaty is a promise that for every one of these things we deploy, we'll decommission a nuke.

Senate approve that treaty yet?

34

@19

I'll confess, the same thought crossed my mind.  Let's just keep in mind that our military has had some pretty mind-bogglingly horrendous stuff at their disposal for a couple of generations now, and they seem to have been kept extremely well under control.  One could argue that it's been kept TOO under control, in some cases.

A small tactical nuke might have been a great move at Tora Bora, for example, but the whole idea of ANY nukes really freaks people out, so we never make that kind of move. As another example, remember the "Highway of Death" in Gulf War I?

35

Re: the new Spam policy.  I've done a quick "whois" on the IP's I've seen, and they all appear to be Chinese.  That's interesting, since I'm sure we don't have any regular contributors from the PRC here.

I wonder if it's possible to pre-emptively ban all Chinese sourced IP's.  It looks like this blog would lose nothing and gain much by doing so.

36

Plus, "tungsten" is one of those words that just sounds cool.

Wolfram is cooler!

37 It's like a timeshare, I believe. You pay a certain amount for the right to plow a particular top-shelf hooker for a certain number of nights in a year.

Nah, a "plowshare" is a type of sandwich you get from Shoney's.

38 Tom Maguire has an interesting take on the whole thing: "My cynical guess - Obama is backing this now in preference to maintaining a nuclear stockpile; later, the obvious problems with this weapons system will become obvious to him.... This is bait and switch by Obama - a guy who couldn't back a missile defense system because it is too destabilizing will never back this, not too mention that his base will howl, but it may be expedient right now to pretend to be a tough guy."

39 It looks like this blog would lose nothing and gain much by doing so.

You'll take l a c e w i g s from our cold dead blog.

40 #34 Yeah I suppose that's all we got. Anyway food for thought.

41 Can we use these things to strike at spammers? Priority Target: LACEWIGS

42 I just hope that hackers can't get access to this weaponry, other wise George Lucas may be in trouble as people weren't too please with the second Star Wars Trilogy says youtube.

43

I hope that something in our arsenal can shoot down an Iranian missle now that The Vapid One™ cancelled the Airborne Laser.

Confidence in him is not high, I repeat, not high.

44 I'll just report my lefty link from the open thread: http://tinyurl.com/2dqz9k8 -- good summary of the above, from their side so its harder to impeach.

45 I'll just report my lefty link from the open thread: http://tinyurl.com/2dqz9k8 -- good summary of the above, from their side so its harder to impeach and my idea to justify a moonbase -- http://tinyurl.com/24mh28

46 I hope we aren't really going to launch Trident missles to obliterate 3,000 sq.ft!   That's a lot of effort and $$ to obliterate everything on roughly half my back yard.  Although I wouldn't mind calling in one strike it will get those fooking moles!  I hate those critters and calling in napalm strikes just drives them down into their tunnels for a few days.

Perhaps each "scored tungsten rod", with which the warhead is filled, obliterates everything within 3,000 sq. ft. 

47 Is that 3000 sq ft for each rod?

48 There's been some cool weapons porn in recent weeks. Especially with PGMs.

1) APKWS (Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System) got cleared for delivery to Afghanistan. APKWS is a laser guided 70mm Hydra for Apaches. Mini-Hellfires. Very cool.

2) APMI (Advanced Precision Mortar Initiative). ATK won the shoot-off to deliver by November to Afghanistan. APMI is GPS guided 120mm mortars.

3) Air dropped mortars. General Dynamics successfully tested their nano-JDAM kits for 81mm mortars so they can be air dropped from small UAVs. In unrelated news the Army put out an urgent request to field a sub 25 lb precision weapon within 12 months on small UAVs.

49
Are the Chinese really going to pay for a weapon system that will likely have to be used to defend against an attack by them?

50

Is that 3000 sq ft for each rod?

I assume that's why they are "scored".  They probably turn into some kind of plasma on impacting at that speed.

51

A small tactical nuke might have been a great move at Tora Bora, for example, but the whole idea of ANY nukes really freaks people out, so we never make that kind of move. As another example, remember the "Highway of Death" in Gulf War I?

Posted by: Optimizer at April 23, 2010 10:42 AM (JC+x3)

As far as I know we didn't even deploy any MOABs over there.  That would have been the ideal solution for the Faluja problem we were having in Iraq for a while.  This insistence on what the article refers to as "self-deterence" is getting tiresome.  People need examples - a show of force indicating that we are serious about our objectives.  Vaporizing a small city, whether through conventional or nuclear means, is a perfect example of that kind of bold, attention getting move.  The lives of enemies and their supporters are of no concern - indeed, we should be pleased when a large number of them are snuffed out without incurring US casualties.

52 Sorry, but all death-dealing missile technology must bow before the Flying Crowbar.

Tungsten rods are cool and all, but why use a scalpel when you can use a big f*cking, radiation-spewing hammer?

53 48 Is that 3000 sq ft for each rod?

Posted by: Jean at April 23, 2010 10:56 AM (PjevJ)

How YOU doin'?

54 I think a tac nuke to Tora Bora could have been used in advance of the rats running there; "to prepare the battlefield". The use of ADMs was always seen as less provocative then a tactical strike. It also would have sent a message.

55 These things are nice and all, but what I'd like to see is the Hammer of Dawn actually being made into reality.  How cool and fucking awesome would it be to have an earth-scorching death ray from space be controlled with a hand-held laser guidance unit?  We've already got legions of expertly trained soldiers in waiting if this should ever come about.

56 Tungsten rods are cool and all, but why use a scalpel when you can use a big f*cking, radiation-spewing hammer?

Posted by: Starless at April 23, 2010 11:03 AM (HbeWz)

That would have been so sweet....  As I recall they said that the boom would deafen people for miles around the flight path, and the radiation would cook the chickens in the back yard of anybody it flew over.  Talk about scorched earth!  Naturally, we woudn't want to launch those from sites in the US.

57 3000 sq ft is about a 30 ft. radius... a circle 60 ft wide.  we're swapping out nukes for large shotguns?

58 It looks like this blog would lose nothing and gain much by doing so.

You'll take l a c e w i g s from our cold dead blog.



Exactly.

Besides, we actually have a moron or two who occasionally comment from China. Real AoS morons, American expatriates working in China. Wouldn't want to deprive them of AoSHQ-brand boobies, war pron, and bacon.

59 I'm thinking a "plowshare" is when a bunch of us get to share a plow. Under the new 5yr plan.

60 A.G. - the problem is we cant use the nukes because their footprint is too large. I am not sure I like either the Trident or the Cruise Missile idea. I like using the X37B + Project Thor (Rods for God) to do the job.

61 HH - I have a plow, your welcome to come use it and the tractor whenever you like.

62
Telephone-pole sized tungsten rods should only be dropped from space, not from a missile.

63 As some other commenters have pointed out, seems like a lot of money and effort for not a lot of bang. I'm sure they would be great for seriously precision shots on certain targets, but for use as anything against amassed forces, seems like wasted effort. Also, don't we already have stuff that does this kind of thing? We already have cruise missiles. Yeah, they're slower than this, but killing anything in an hour versus an hour and a half seems like, kinda, meh.

64

So we give up a nuke that would take out a city in exchange for a missile that would take out a house?

That sounds like Obama.

65

Posted by: Jean at April 23, 2010 11:19 AM (OlnxK)

Why thank ya Jean. Never know when an offer like that will come in handy!

66 Otherwise known as Rods from God.

67 The last time I checked a generation 1 cruise missile cost 2.5 million dollars.

So we are going to spend 2.5M or more to take out a camel at Mach-5?

68 Dang, the problems with Project Thor (Rods from God) has always been a policy/diplomatic issue with the "militarization of space" not technical. The X37B can stay up there for 9months or more, during a crisis. Drop as required and return. I think the X37B is what killed the next gen bomber programs.

69

"Word races through the American intelligence network...."

What a hoot. Jeez, I think I messed my Depends.

70

62  So kinda like a kulak time share?

As for the war pron -- bring it!  I just love this shit -- wonder what that experimental shuttle's place is in all of this?  Maybe we kept the laser beam program after all? (a gal can hope)

71
diplomatic issue with the "militarization of space"

It's kind of naive to think the Rooskies (or us) don't have nukes up there.  And I should hope Bush 1 was enough of a sneaky bastard to quietly deploy the Rods from God.

72 BTW, the cost of a J-DAM smart bomb is 20K.

73 catmmam - the cruise missile time to target cycle is a lot longer then that -- flight time might be shorter, but moving the launch platform into range and getting overflight privileges, etc. Rods from Gods, 15min from NCA strike authorization. D5 roughly 30min flight time, a few minutes of launch prep. Would have gotten BinLaden or Saddam.

74 Dang, my reason for going to the Moon - a permanent Rods from God base -- and a presence to prevent others from doing the same. There are no significant science/physics hurdles to overcome. Just a big enough engineering budget and political commitment.

75

This is just the further evolution of the "small, fast, precise" revolution in weapons that has been underway in the US arsenal for a long while now. The Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shell is the reason the Crusader artillery gun was scrapped; the older gun worked just fine, and the new shell is so accurate that it requires only a tenth the number of shells to achieve the same result. The SDB (small-diameter-bomb) used by the Air Force is similar -- it puts a 250lb bomb into a one-meter circle rather than using a 1000lb bomb to blow up the entire block. The US Army's M16 caught a lot of grief early on for being basically just a small-caliber target rifle, but it turns out that precision shooting is really a better way for infantry to fight (though a larger caliber would still be preferable for stopping power).

The whole idea is that you want to kill the bad guys without incurring a lot of collateral damage. This is inherently the problem with using artillery and bombing -- you have to destroy a large area to make sure the enemies are "covered". During World War II, the weapons were so imprecise that you basically had to saturate-bomb an entire city to make sure the job got done. During the Vietnam conflict we implemented laser-guided bombs, but the bombs themselves were still dumb, and the delivery systems were still crude.

But now, technology means that you only have to shoot one shell (or whatever) and you're about 95% sure of getting a hit. This is a good thing in both tactical and strategic terms. (I don't think the "conventional ballistic missile approach" is ever going to be approved, regardless of how sound the basic idea is; the danger of someone mistaking it for a nuke are just too great. If you had to call everyone to assure them that it was just a conventional weapon, you ruin both the short-time-window advantage and the surprise advantage.)

 

76 58 These things are nice and all, but what I'd like to see is the Hammer of Dawn actually being made into reality.  How cool and fucking awesome would it be to have an earth-scorching death ray from space be controlled with a hand-held laser guidance unit?  We've already got legions of expertly trained soldiers in waiting if this should ever come about.

Posted by: EC at April 23, 2010 11:08 AM (mAhn3)

Heh.  Worried about the Locust Horde are we?  The trailer for Gears of War 3 looks awesome, by the way.  Release date isn't until 2011, though.  Grrr.

77

Rest assured, the Air Force couldn't get a chit approved for cavalry saddles without Stinky trading away a nuke for each one. And we need saddles.

That said, if you launched one of these from a Hustler you could skip the whole first stage. So they weren't obsolete, after all. I've been saying so for 30 years.

Thanks and a tip o'the hat to A.G. for noticing that "within 3000 square feet" is not a measure of distance. Major military science coverage, there.

78

There are also issues with "mass driver" weapons (the "Rods from God" concept). The idea has been around since the 1960's, but the destructiveness of these weapons approaches that of a tactical nuke -- which leads many people to classify them as strategic rather than tactical weapons. Thus they'd be out of the reach of field commanders or even theater commanders, and would mean that a lot of bureaucratic machinery would have to come into play to deploy them. Their usefulness in this situation is therefore very limited. You'd do better to just use your field artillery with GPS-guided shells.

 

79

I think the X37B is what killed the next gen bomber programs.

Speaking of which, back in the late 80's me and some buds were out  telescoping up in the Mohave desert. Driving back to LA in the morn, passing Edwards AFB, saw something odd. 2 planes, flying low and slow.. One of those was a trainer jet(?), which I had seen on TV used as chase planes when the Shuttle was first tested. The other plane looked like a 1-man version of the shuttle. Small, delta-winged. They were flying together, flew toward us and the paralleled the highway for a bit. This was like 8:30 or so in the morning, so I guess they weren't trying to hide anything.

Kind of cool, really.

80

How cool and fucking awesome would it be to have an earth-scorching death ray from space be controlled with a hand-held laser guidance unit?

We don't need any stinkin' hand-held laser guidance units.

81 1. 3000 sq ft is about the size of a house. (circle of radius of 30 ft)

2. that article makes it sound that this is for each warhead.
"...12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated"
Since it would take a lot more than 12 .50 cal's to destroy that area, and their grammar implies that the storm, and not each rod, inflicts the specified damage.

3. An ICBM to destroy four houses? are they kidding? There has got to be a better way.

82

Heh.  Worried about the Locust Horde are we?  The trailer for Gears of War 3 looks awesome, by the way.  Release date isn't until 2011, though.  Grrr.

Epic is just down the road from me.  Haven't played 2 yet, but 1 was fun.

"Why can't we use the Hammer of Dawn all the time?"

83

<i>Since it would take a lot more than 12 .50 cal's to destroy that area, and their grammar implies that the storm, and not each rod, inflicts the specified damage.</i>

Er...no. A .50 cal round is hugely destructive (lots of mass x lots of energy = a very big boom). And a tungsten round traveling at a much higher terminal velocity would be correspondingly much more destructive. It's a basic mass-to-energy transfer going on. Orbitally-delivered mass-driver weapons approach near-nuclear energy yields in some cases (in terms of actual rather than theoretical peak, anyway).

If you open up a .50 cal on an average house in a suburb,  that house will be utterly destroyed with about 100-150 rounds. Not <i>totally</i> destroyed, maybe, but structurally and functionally totally compromised. (And you're firing from the side, which means that a lot of your shells will do a through-and-through; an orbitally-delivered mass with spend most of its energy inside the structure by striking the floor or ground underneath the structure. This means more destructive power concentrated inside the structure.)

 

84 I have to think that 3000 sq. ft. is a mistake.  I think it is within 3000 ft. period. 

85 Crap, sock off.

86 14 Plus, "tungsten" is one of those words that just sounds cool.
______________

I agree.

(and my keyboard tastes funny)

87

I have to think that 3000 sq. ft. is a mistake. 

I'm thinking that the real specs of this weapon wasn't in the article.

88
Behold!  The power of MA DUECE!

89 I can't see any country keeping their nukes in the barn while one of these toys are screaming at them. They will launch everything they have and we will take out a house.

90 Jean @ 63

Yeah, I totally understand that point.  Though if they aren't ever to be used, they kinda become pointless.  It was that DiT mentioned that there would be a swap-out: for each one of these, a nuke would be decommissioned according to Obama's new START treaty.  The only way that makes any sort of sense is if these are effective ABM tech. Otherwise its us saying we're totally f'in up your houses while the Russians say they're eliminating whole cities.

91 Unproven and it is scary to my friends in North Korea and Iran so... I'm cancelling it in 3..2..1..

92

Mach 5 is the slow lane in black ops aerospace. It'll be a few years before they reveal the Mach 39 scram jet delivery system, or the Mach 375+ gravity drive. National security and all that.

Its not uncommon for the military to be 2 generations ahead of anything they reveal to the public. After all, rockets to the moon was 50 years ago, and we still use that technology (publicly).

Did you see the DARPA RFP for the flying car for the military? There is a link over at Wired Danger Room.

93 They are definitely not for use against Russians, unless we have a lot of them.

94 "DARPA RFP for the flying car for the military? " A flying tank was a serious contender in the transition from the UH-1/AH-1 to the UH-60/AH-64/RAH-66 helo concepts. It was a low slow, heavily armored helo - imagine a flying bradley or a heavier hind. Immune to buried IEDs, RPGs, RPKs.

95 just testing...

96

Flying tank?

Thinking Hammer's Slammers here.  Aircushion.  Not going to get 75 tons flying without big engines, huge rotors, enormous fuel consumption, and runways.  VTOL aircraft load out more munitions as they can go from VT to ski-ramp, to short-field, to conventional runway.

Ground effect is the only way to go for heavy armor.

97 OT: Earth Day is over. Consider what George Said.

13,000 MPH war pron. Like.

98 An hour would be just about enough time to adjust one earth orbit.

Any bets the X-37 is field testing a precision strike command center?  To see if one can hold up to space for none months? Imagine a couple of those orbiting the earth loaded with Jerry Pournelle's "flying crowbars" (guided tungsten rods).

99 Richard - it was really a heavy helo. Imagine a counter-rotating, squarish, Hind -- w/o the wings, tail, nose gunner, etc. Range was to match an M-1 operational radius. Limited to 100Kt airspeed and very simple to fly. I don't think they built a prototype. If build today, it would have to have a DIRCM or other anti-missile defense. This was late 70's early 80's timeframe.

100

@77:

Yeah, Heinlein had something similar going on in The Moon in a Harsh Mistress when he had the colonists fighting for independence drop big rocks onto the Earth from the Moon.  Lots of KE built up on a free fall from that distance!!!

101 If B+rry promises anything....he's lying. That's good news here....kinda.

102 Is it just me or does that thing look a lot like a Reaver ship?

103 An ICBM to destroy four houses? are they kidding? There has got to be a better way.

What else are we going to do with'em?  I don't think we plan on nuking anyone in the near future so all those cold war boosters are just kinda laying around doing nothing and costing maintenance money.  Better to use'em up tactically now than sell'em by the pound for scrap later.