"God's Thunder Rod" - a weapon of destruction from space

The Outer Space Treaty, signed by 107 nations in 1967, prohibits the deployment or use of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from Earth orbit. However, the nations did not anticipate the simplest weapon ever developed by the U.S. Air Force: a tungsten rod that can strike an entire city with the same destructive power as an intercontinental ballistic missile, according toBusiness Insider.

This is a special weapon called Project Thor.The US Air Force has been developing the bomb since the late 1950s. Its predecessor was a bomb that contained no explosives, made of solid steel dropped from an aircraft. When dropped from a height of nearly 1,000 m, these steel bars can reach a speed of up to 800 km/h when hitting the ground and are capable of penetrating a 23 cm thick layer of concrete.

The idea is similar to firing a bullet at a target, but instead of slowing down due to friction and gravity, the steel bar gradually gains speed and energy as it moves toward the target.

In Project Thor, instead of dropping hundreds of small steel bars from a height of thousands of meters, the US military came up with the idea of ​​using large steel bars mounted on satellites, then dropping them from a distance of thousands of kilometers in Earth orbit to the target.

The weapon, dubbed "God's Lightning Rod," is a cylindrical tungsten rod about 6 meters long and 60 centimeters in diameter, falling freely from Earth's orbit and reaching a speed 10 times the speed of sound when hitting the ground.

With such speed and kinetic energy, the "lightning rod" will penetrate hundreds of meters underground and destroy any solid bunkers or secret underground facilities. Its destructive power is equivalent to a ground-penetrating atomic bomb but does not cause radioactive fallout. This weapon can completely destroy the target within 15 minutes.

The idea of ​​a “God’s Thunderstick” was appealing to the US military, but the cost of implementing the project was another matter. An expert working in the US space defense industry estimated that the cost of sending 0.5 kg of material into space at that time was at least 10,000 USD. The cost of sending a solid tungsten “Thunderstick” weighing more than 10 tons into orbit would be up to 230 million USD, a figure beyond imagination during the Cold War.

For comparison, the cost of a Minuteman III nuclear-tipped missile, one of the best missiles in the US military's arsenal, was $7 million when it was produced in 1962, equivalent to $57 million today.

However, the problem with nuclear warheads is that they are not designed to penetrate deep into the ground, while radioactive fallout from the explosion can severely devastate the surrounding environment, including the territories of allied countries.

Therefore, the idea of ​​"God's thunderbolt" has never been completely abandoned by the US military. The Bush administration once considered using this weapon to attack underground nuclear facilities of countries considered "sponsors of terrorism" after 9/11.

In 2013, the US military successfully test-fired a kinetic energy warhead made of tungsten at a special test track at Holloman base, with the projectile reaching a velocity of more than three times the speed of sound.

Recently, the Pentagon also tested electromagnetic guns that fire special non-explosive warheads that can reach speeds six times the speed of sound to destroy targets with enormous kinetic energy.

The core idea behind hypersonic weapons like Project Thor is that they are extremely effective and could become the mainstay of future battlefields, military analysts say.