Air-droppable, that is (I’m aware of the Javelin).Is there such a beast? I started wondering about it after hearing reports of Iraqi military equipment being hidden in residential areas.
In such cases, collateral damage could be minimized by dropping oh…say…1000 pounds of steel through the roof of a tank. It would not be a “catastrophic kill” but the tank would be out of action.
Crap! Wrong board! I meant to post this in GQ.
I think there was a report on the news the other day about the use of a precision-guided bomb filled with concrete, pretty much for the reasons you suggest: to take out one building without damaging the ones around it.
Moderator’s Note: Off to GQ.
I asked a GQ about “inert bombs” a few weeks ago. Lots of info for you there. Do a fast search. G’ luck.
And here’s a news story discussing the use of concrete-filled “bombs” for strikes on targets in densely populated areas.
There are also air dropped munitions which essentially open up above the target and release a number of steel rods. These are useful for taking out satellite dishes without damaging the building and for shorting out electric transmission facilities while sparing the infrastructure.
This ( http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/atacms-bat.htm ) is very close to what you’re thinking about. The BAT had a history of test problems and – I can’t remember for certain – I believe it may have been shelved.
In another thread, somebody mentioned that some anti-aircraft missiles don’t have an explosive warhead, they just contain a long steel rod that ends up going through the plane’s engine.
If memory serves, a very nifty kinetic energy weapon system was postulated by Niven and Pournelle (probably Pournelle) in Footfall. The invading aliens wipe out entire armor divisions by dropping what were basically steel javelins on individual targets from orbit.
Also used in the Night’s Dawn Trilogy…
space kinetic weapons have an almost limitless potential- an object could be accelerated halfway across the solar system for weeks before it hit the target, and deliver a punch equivalent to the sum of the energy used in the acceleration period in a single instant.
But the orbit-to-ground weapons are perhaps more manageable- they could be fitted with guidance systems, and reenter on a steep trajectory to avoid too much deflection by the atmosphere.
Such a reentry path would be expensive in energy, however.
Sci-fi worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/
Pournelle it was. Here’s a bit on his THOR system.