Kinetic bombardment
Kinetic bombardment or kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile from orbit. The destructive power comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb. These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster.
About Kinetic bombardment in brief
Kinetic bombardment or kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile from orbit. The destructive power comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds. 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. 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. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb. These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster. As the name suggests, the ‘bunker buster’ is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker. In June 2020, a senior Al Qaeda leader was killed by a kinetic weapon dropped by a United States Special Operations General Atomics drone.
The weapon would be very hard to defend against. It has a very high cross-section, small velocity and small infrared launch signature. The system would also have to cope with atmospheric heating from re-entry, which could melt non-tungsten components of the weapon. The phrase \”rods from God\” is also used to describe the same concept with the same name. An Air Force report called them ‘hypervelocity bundles’ in June 2020. The U.S. Air Force reported that the weapon would have a much smaller launch signature in orbit than a ballistic missile launch. The concept originated during the Cold War. Typical depictions of the tactic are of a satellite containing a magazine of tengsten rods and a directional thrust system.
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This page is based on the article Kinetic bombardment published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 20, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
