Robot Plane Drops Bomb in Successful Test: Under human supervision but without human piloting, a prototype of the Boeing Co.'s X-45 took off from the desert base, opened its bomb bay doors, dropped a 250-pound Small Smart Bomb and then landed. The inert bomb struck within inches of the truck it was supposed to hit, Boeing said.
The X-45A was preprogrammed with the target coordinates and used the satellite-based Global Positioning System to adjust its course. The Y-shaped, tailless plane has a 34-foot wingspan and weighs 8,000 pounds empty. It is the first drone designed specifically to carry weapons into combat. Boeing hopes to build hundreds of the X-45 planes, which would cost $10 million to $15 million each.
"The Generation 2 Kill Vehicle will be integrated into the Near-Field Infrared Experiment payload."
The satellite's primary mission is to gather data on the exhaust fumes of rockets in space, information that will then be used to help future space weapons differentiate more clearly between a target and its trailing plume.
But NFIRE is itself weaponized, carrying a projectile-packed "kill vehicle" that can destroy passing missiles or satellites [...] This marks the first time in history that any nation has put a weapon in space, despite America's still-official policy against such a practice. [...] It began in August 2002 and has moved steadily toward its long-established Summer 2004 launch date. [...]
And the boys in Space Command are just getting warmed up. They wowed the salivating Bushist faithful in Congress with highly detailed plans for a whizbang space arsenal led by the "Rods From God" -- bundles of tungsten rods fired from orbiting platforms, hurtling toward earth at 3,700 meters per second, accurate within a range of 8 meters and able to destroy even the most hardened targets, the Center for Defense Information reports. They could be launched at only a few minutes' notice at any target on the planet.
They could have had those remote controlled planes way back when if they listened to Tesla.
Who's "they"?
US Military.
Yeah, "Heaven's Trail" and "Love Song" always made me think about killin' people too when I listened to them.
Glad I wasn't the only one.
shit
orbital rail cannons
Technology is neat, but now I'm going to have "99 Red Balloons" stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
As I recall, the "rods from space" thing is bollocks, because the time to deorbit them is quite long -- comparable to the orbital period, so order of an hour. They can't do anything that a missile can't do -- but they're incredibly expensive and destabilising. So chalk up another victory for the procurement people in the Defence Department. Cf. an old USENET posting.
You're right, in order to have a satellite close enough to intercept, they have to be at very low orbit, which means they have to go very fast in orbit, which means you need a LOT of them. I've seen graphs of number of satellites vs closing time, and it appears we'd need thousands of kill vehicles in orbit. Something that would cost trillions of dollars.
It wont happen. Even ground based kill vehicles are difficult, because even the fastest rockets need to be very close to be able to close with the missile in time. You basically have to fire it from right on the border of the country that fired the missile at you.
I didn't see them as anti-missile at all. Specifically the mention that it could be used against hardened targets and launched at almost anything.
I'm seeing it as more "oh, how did that nosy reporter just happen to end up with a tungsten rod in his head?" Then again, who doesn't want an orbital death ray (or the nearest equivalent)?
The satellite's primary mission is to gather data on the exhaust fumes of rockets in space, information that will then be used to help future space weapons differentiate more clearly between a target and its trailing plume.
But NFIRE is itself weaponized, carrying a projectile-packed "kill vehicle" that can destroy passing missiles or satellites
I took that to mean it was to destroy missiles.
I don't think that's referring to the tungsten rod (which, let's face it, isn't nearly as good as an inanimate carbon rod) launcher, but rather, another project. Thus the bit right after what you quoted:
And the boys in Space Command are just getting warmed up.They wowed the salivating Bushist faithful in Congress with highly detailed plans for a whizbang space arsenal led by the "Rods From God"
Not to mention stating that:
able to destroy even the most hardened targets ... They could be launched at only a few minutes' notice at any target on the planet.
Which, unless we have new crawling missiles or something seems not to indicate missiles at all as they're rarely "on the planet" and definitely not hardened targets.
So yeah, I think they're talking about two different things.
I doubt they'll deorbit a $10 million kill vehicle just to blow up a building. We have bombers for that.
But you never know, this is just some bullshit for congress to eat up. It has more to do with funding than with what they actually intend to do.
I'm pretty certain you're still getting things confused with each other.
The tungsten rod launchers are clearly defined as that: something that launches tungsten rods. I assume that the entire object doesn't need to be deorbited for that, but will remain in space. Likewise I couldn't find any information on it costing $10 million.
We have two things going on here: a missile defense system known as NFIRE that is in the earliest stages of testing right now and a futuristic tungsten rod system that's designed to strike anywhere on Earth in a couple of minutes. That is, of couse, from the second story and totally ignoring the $10-15 million robot planes being tested.
Perhaps it is 2 things, but I am only talking about the NFIRE story.
You can't shoot down a missile with a tungsten rod. Anti-missile missiles have to use thrusters to correct their flight path down to the very last fraction of a second before impact.
Perhaps they want to destroy targets on the ground with it, and they're justifying putting it in space with a missile defense "feature" which wont actually work.
That's the problem, they are two things. The anti-missile system is not the same as the tungsten rod system. They're two totally separate and unrelated things. The only thing they have in common is that they're going to be in space. The rod system is designed for ground targets and from the sounds of things is pretty theoretical at the moment.
NFIRE is a space-based system to assess missile paths in space and will be equipped with what is only referred to as a "projectile-packed 'kill vehicle'" that will attempt to destroy said missiles (at least it said "passing missiles") while in space. Nothing is being deorbited as the entire plan is for all of this to happen... well, IN SPACE.
Please, if this still isn't obvious re-read the article carefully.
I wonder if you can use orbital tungsten rods to cook lots and lots of popcorn.
Well, you'd need some sort of large rotating mirror to aim with I assume.
I'll look into it after I work on these entries for the latest Frito-Lay sweepstakes.
so let me get this straight, humans create machines that can destroy humans without being operated or controlled by humans...which will eventually lead to an apocalpytic war between man and machine..hmm
so basically the terminator is a true story.
Well, landmines can destroy humans without being operated or controlled by humans too. I think they were the first "single celled" version of the terminator :)
Nice
The UCAVs are much scarier than Rods From God, if you ask me. They're cheap, minimise the chances of US casualties/POWS (the only thing that stops US military adventures these days), and already pretty much exist. Rods From God are untested, expensive, monolithic (launch one satellite-killer, goodbye Rods), and require decent intelligence to be useful.
Assuming for a second that automatic people-killers are a good thing, it's still going to take a lot of intelligence improvements for them to avoid being directed to bomb our allies and ourselves.
It seems clear that the Bush Administration's goal is to have no allies. And if these can be fully automated our soldiers don't need to be anywhere near the line of fire either.