"This Weapon Can Penetrate A Hardened Bunker That " Topic

…Is Hundreds Of Feet Under The Earth.

"The 107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed or used from Earth's orbit. What they didn't count on was the U.S. Air Force's most simple weapon ever: a tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. used what they called "Lazy Dog" bombs. These were simply solid steel pieces, less than two inches long, fitted with fins. There was no explosive – they were simply dropped by the hundreds from planes flying above Vietnam.

Lazy Dog projectiles (aka "kinetic bombardment") could reach speeds of up to 500 mph as they fell to the ground and could penetrate nine inches of concrete after being dropped from as little as 3,000 feet…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

The idea of kinetic dropped weapons has been in use since at least WW1 – I have an 'aerial dart' that my grandfather collected while in the Middle East with the Australian Light Horse.

Then Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle have used them several times in their S.F. works

Of course some bright boy in the Defence Industry is going to get a big bonus for 'inventing' this. It will however be very difficult to make any claims of I.P. or originality.

Cost aside I don't see why we have not already deployed these "rods from god."

are you sure we haven't?

@Saber6: We certainly haven't used one, yet.

Funny enough, those space treaties also make it the responsibility of the spacefaring craft's owning country for cleaning up after a crashlanding.