Defense Tech gives an update on the latest pusch from the Empire's Department of Defense of the Pork Barrel known reverentially among Rumsfeld's posse as "Rods from God".
Of all the far-fetched space weapons hyped by the Times last month, "Rods from God" are probably the most dubious. That doesn't stop the Weekly Standard from panting about how totally wicked awesome it would be if the Air Force really could drop giant tungsten slabs from orbit, however.
...It's not until the 9th paragraph (of a 12-graph story) that the Standard reveals, "the likelihood of the rods, or any other system, being deployed in space over the next decade [are] next to nil.'" What's never mentioned at all is the opinion of many physicists that the rods would only be a small fraction as effective as conventional bombs.
Much of the hype behind this in the main$tream media talks about dropping tungsten rods from space. The reality is the more likely metal they'll choose is depleted uranium. As discussed in detail in this .pdf from the RAND Organization, not only is depleted uranium denser, easier, and cheaper than tugsten to machine work, once you coat it with ceramic its resistant to atmospheric corrosion at high temperatures. And it's far better at penetration, it burns viciously on impact, and has a lovely characteristic for the pyschopaths of leaving a toxic radioactive residue.
And moreover, it's already being used extensively as an armor penetration kinetic device in places like Iraq.
They say tungsten when they want to Gee-Whiz the proles.
They use depleted uranium to do the dirty work.
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