Berichten zufolge erwägt die US-Luftwaffe den Einsatz eines hochentwickelten neuen Waffensystems im Weltraum, das derzeit im Rahmen des „Projekts Thor“ entwickelt wird. Während der Weltraumvertrag von 1967 den USA den Einsatz nuklearer, biologischer oder chemischer Waffen im Weltraum verbietet, verspricht diese neue Waffe stärkere Angriffe als viele Arten nuklearer und chemischer Angriffe – und gleichzeitig die Vermeidung der ungünstigen Folgen, die auf Atomangriffe folgen. Die Entwicklung einer nicht-nuklearen weltraumgestützten „Superwaffe“ verschafft den USA auch einen potenziell massiven Vorteil gegenüber Gegnern, die ihre eigenen Atomwaffenarsenale nicht zum ersten Mal einsetzen, wie China und Nordkorea, und es den USA ermöglichen, damit Ziele anzugreifen Stärke wie ein Atomsprengkopf, ohne dass es zu einem Atomkrieg kommt. Die Investition in eine solche Fähigkeit würde vor dem Hintergrund des wachsenden amerikanischen Interesses an nichtnuklearen strategischen Waffen erfolgen, zu dem auch Investitionen in das Hyperschall-Interkontinentalraketenprogramm „Conventional Prompt Global Strike“ für die U-Boote und Tarnkappenzerstörer der Marine gehörten.
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Die Kosten für den Einsatz dieser Stäbe, die aufgrund der Dichte des Wolframs über 10.000 kg wiegen, können unerschwinglich sein. Jeder Stab wird voraussichtlich über 230 Millionen US-Dollar kosten – ein Vielfaches des Preises konventioneller und nuklearer Bunkerbrecher. Solche Einsätze können auch dazu führen, dass rivalisierende Mächte versuchen, sich zu rächen, indem sie eigene ähnliche Systeme einsetzen, was möglicherweise ein Wettrüsten im Weltraum auslöst. Die psychologischen Auswirkungen des Einsatzes dieser Waffen, die auch nach Stilllegung der Luftwaffenstützpunkte immer noch in der Lage sein werden, Angriffe aus einer Höhe von Zehntausenden von Kilometern durchzuführen, könnten das Projekt Thor an sich schon zu einer lohnenden Investition machen.
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/project-thor-what-america-s-new-rods-from-god-space-based-superweapon-can-do
22 Kommentare
If you’re first with a space weapon Ypu can be the only one. Of course that requires upu to have enough up there fast enough to be able to neutralize the nuclear arsenal of others… So… Yeah, this isn’t happening, if it was it already has and we don’t know.
Hard to believe a nuclear power wouldn’t retaliate with nukes if one of their citys was inexplicably deleted by a space gun.
You have to defend this space weapon as well. Satellite killer hits this and rods of uncertain reentry become everyone’s problem!
I fail to see how this is any better than an ICBM without a nuclear payload though, we can already strike wherever we want in the world so what possible gain do we get from a satellite of this nature?
Edit: not to mention if you’re going to argue the same level of force of a nuclear bomb, that’s not going to make it suddenly okay. If you’re only concerned with the fallout we’ve long since stopped making nuclear bombs that way, that’s what we have hydrogen bombs for
Yeah like the defence against any weapon of mass destruction is the same, which is MAD. You think an enemy is going to go, „Oh well they destroyed our country but they didn’t use nukes so we’re just gonna take the L and move on.“
Don’t let the Federation of the Americas get their hands on these.
Need to unite and send love, before they kill the planet.
I don’t see why using a non-nuclear weapon that is as powerful as a nuclear weapon would preclude the possibility of an escalation to nuclear war.
Also the word „may“ is doing a lot of lifting in the „may lead to an arms race“ sentence lol. It almost certainly would, for anyone who could afford it.
> highly sophisticated new weapons systems in space,
A radical idea. I haven’t heard of it since Jerry Pournelle proposed the same thing in 1989. They even labeled it the Thor’s Hammer.
Yes they are heavy. But they are much more resistant to ASAT than other weapons systems in space. They are big chunks of metal with a guidance system. Don’t give me that „they could re-enter uncontrolled in a conflict“ argument. That is true of every single orbital vehicle in existence.
Wth this was in that GI Joe movie. Its from where that gif of London being destroyed is from
They used this exact weapon in the film G.I. Joe Retaliation, down to the tungsten rods. I think the film came out more than a decade ago.
>which is **currently under development** under ‘Project Thor.’
No.
Project Thor was an idea discarded back in the 1950’s.
Somebody wrote a theoretical report on it back in 2003.
Thats it. There is no „currently under development“.
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Edit – I see now, you’re just a plagiarist who [copied the text of an article](https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/project-thor-what-america-s-new-rods-from-god-space-based-superweapon-can-do) from back in 2020.
$230.000.000 for a single shot, and that’s only the cost of the payload itself.
And yes the „grey area“ explanation wouldn’t cut it when it comes to superweapons, it’d likely lead to a nuclear-weapons kind of retaliation.
„Each rod costs 230 million“
Well glad that’s a priority instead of housing veterans, providing school lunches to poverty kids, or having universal healthcare.
No they aren’t. This has been proposed for at least 20 years now. But A. When they first did the calculations for damage they were off by an order of magnitude. B. The cost for this weapon is ludicrous. C. It’s pretty impossible to defend. The US military is definitely not considering this. It’s been considered and rejected as totally impractical.
I thought these things were ruled out a decade ago for being a cool idea but ultimately being inhrrently flawed.
Could do a lot more with a few >!redacted!< >!redacted!< >!redacted!< >!redacted!< and then you >!redacted!< >!redacted!< >!redacted!<
Like we don’t have enough weapons already to completely kill the planet… But hey let’s get some more…
https://search.app?link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.armscontrol.org%2Ffactsheets%2Fouter-space-treaty-glance%23%3A~%3Atext%3DThe%25201967%2520Outer%2520Space%2520Treaty%2Cexploration%2520and%2520use%2520of%2520space.&utm_campaign=aga&utm_source=agsadl1%2Csh%2Fx%2Fgs%2Fm2%2F4
Nearly every claimed advantage for this thing doesn’t exist. One major issue is that you can’t just „drop“ them from orbit. If you release one rod from the carrier, the rod will just hang there, because it’s still in orbit. It needs to be given a push BACKWARDS, against the direction of the orbit. The harder the push, the more directly it will fall down. To fall straight down, it needs to be pushed backwards at about 8 km per second (assuming a LEO with a period off 90 min.). That requires a LOT of energy. So you can make it a rocket (and then it’s not a Rod from God), or you can make the carrier a gun of some kind. If it’s the latter, then the carrier will be pushed in the opposite direction, peturbing its orbit and maybe making a second shot difficult or impossible.
And that’s assuming the thing’s orbit passes directly over the target. Not likely, with one carrier in one orbit. So you could have six carriers in six different, tilted orbits. That would help, though you still need the carrier to come around to the right spot, which might take 90 minutes. So you put several carriers in each orbit. Now we’re talking 36 carriers, each with ten rods (it looks like from the picture). Now we’re talking $82 BILLION just for the rods, excluding the R&D, control systems, training, personnel, maintenance, etc. (Maintenance in space isn’t easy.) And even with six orbits, you still aren’t going to pass exactly over the target, so you need some way to direct the things. So now they’re rockets, again.
Also, the impact is on the order of 10-100 tons of TNT, around the yield of a MOAB. Can they be directed as accurately as a MOAB? Bear in mind that during reentry, they’re surrounded by an envelope of screaming hot plasma that blocks all vision and radio communication (as all the Apollo astronauts in reentry witnessed).
Meanwhile, there are ground based ballistic systems, bombers, cruise missiles, etc. that are well tested, easy to maintain (relatively speaking), VERY accurate and we already have them.
Geezus. So now we are watching fucking GIJoe Retaliation for our future weaponry?
Lord help us…
Edit: Oh and even funnier was in the movie it was „Project Zeus“
Basically we are doing a Norse God instead of a Greek God
That’s super outdated information.
A Falcon 9 Heavy costs about ~100 million to launch to orbit, and can carry ~68,000 kg to Low Earth Orbit.
That means it can easily take 6 of these rods, which brings the cost down to like $16 million each for launch instead of $230 million.
So yeah everyone claiming that „it’s too expensive“ and „we’d totally know about it by now“ and „our government would never do that“ …. how many launches do you think SpaceX has done this year?
They’ve done about 200 launches over the past couple years, some of which we know are for government and military contracts.
Anyway I’m not saying it’s happened or it will happen, but it definitely could happen and nobody would know about it.