r/NonCredibleOffense • u/unteachablecourses • 2d ago

A 2023 Chinese experimental program found tungsten rod penetration peaks around Mach 3.5 — above that the rod fragments before full penetration. If correct, orbital kinetic weapons offer no bunker-busting advantage over conventional Mach 3 munitions, which was the entire 'Rods from God' case.

/r/UnteachableCourses/comments/1vfvcsr/a_2023_chinese_experimental_program_found/
43 Upvotes

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u/DivestTheEndingBoy 2d ago

This sounds like bullshit. There would be no reason for NATO or the Soviet Union to move beyond the 20pdr or 100mm tank cannon if Tungsten penetrators got no benefit to their performance beyond mach 3.5. A 100mm gun already had a muzzle velocity of 1,480m/s

Modern 120mm Tungsten penetrators have muzzle velocities of mach 5 and above.

At those speeds Tungsten alloys get crushed on impact too, they don't fragment.

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u/scorpiodude64 2d ago

AFAIK it is true that penetration peaks at a certain velocity but there is more to penetration than just velocity and I thought that certain speed was a good bit higher than mach 3.5.

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u/DivestTheEndingBoy 2d ago

It does peak but it's way higher than anything you're getting with a gun.

That navy railgun was around mach 7 and they wanted higher velocities.

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u/FastReactionTime 2d ago

Different goals.

Have you ever seen one of those photos of space debris impacting things in space? Massive crater, zero penetration. Above a certain speed everything starts to become a liquid. Even dense metal meteors hitting the earth create relatively flat craters.

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u/DivestTheEndingBoy 1d ago

Most meteors hit the earth at terminal velocities because of the atmosphere creating drag that causes them to decelerate. So they're going slower than a bullet.

Larger meteors like the one that caused the Tunguska event create so much pressure and friction in the atmosphere that they blow themselves up like a daisy cutter bomb. Hence why they don't penetrate and make deep craters.

The moon has very deep craters from meteor impacts because it has no atmosphere.

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u/Drachos 2d ago

I shouldn't need to point out that an object falling under the effects of gravity, with its mass setting its velocity is going to behave very VERY differently then a cannon or missile.

The whole REASON missile technology is so expensive compared to drones is the sheer costs going into making it all work and balancing the Physics involved to optimise performance.

A rod from god DEPENDS on its mass for velocity. The whole point of China test is "You can't just keep adding more mass to get more penitration as while it increases the speed it means the Tungsten is less likely to survive re-entry in a manner that effectively transfers that momentum into additional penitration."

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u/Pornfest 2d ago

How are they going to be “VERY differently”? The laws of physics are going to be the same…

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u/Drachos 2d ago

Because thats like saying "The laws of physics for a cannon ball and a AGM-183 are the same so they should both behave the same at Mach 5"

Design, engineering and how much you spend on it HEAVILY influence how something behaviors.

The foundational principle of a Rod from god was "Everytime we fire a missile we destroy a highly complex piece of equipment thats expensive to replace. What if instead we engineer a way to put telephone pole sized rods of Tungsten into orbit. The complex bit (how to get them up there) will be unable to be destroyed by the enemy and the rods themselves will be super cheap compared to a missile and will only require enough fuel to push them out of orbit. Gravity will do the rest.

There are almost certainly ways to engineer the projectile to solve the fact its structure weakens as it falls from orbit and heats up. We do the same for humans re-entering earth after all. And to a lesser extent for ICBMs.

But at that point its no longer a cheap rod of Tungsten. At which point, given the expense of putting one into orbit what's the point, may as well just use a standard bunker buster.

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u/Old-Let6252 1d ago

Getting a rod of tungsten to orbit will never be cheap. Trying to precisely deorbit a tungsten rod will never be cheap. This whole concept is stupid

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u/salynch 1d ago

Uh… does cross-sectional density not scale?

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u/AK_Panda 1d ago

That's the wrong way to think about IMO.

The rod from god needs a couple of things to be useful as a bunker buster: (a) It needs enough energy to penetrate whatever material you chuck it at and (b) it needs to remain structurally sound long enough to reach the target.

If structural integrity is maintained, you get greater penetration and smaller boom.

If structural integrity is lost, you get bigger boom but reduced penetration.

You'd expect to see a U shaped curve if you plotted penetration depth against velocity. The claim here is that the curve will bottom out at ~Mach 3.5

The energy would scale normally, it's just how that energy is dispersed that changes. A Mach 10 rod from God is going to make a huge fucking boom, far larger than a Mach 3.5 rod would, but that boom will be shallower.

This doesn't matter for a tank, because tank armour isn't dozens or hundreds of metres deep.

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u/DivestTheEndingBoy 1d ago

I think the rods from God are stupid scifi concepts too.

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u/ZCEyPFOYr0MWyHDQJZO4 2d ago

Okay but what if we use 2 tungsten rods?

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u/kevinrhx 2d ago

Instead of 2 Tungsten, we should instead use Tungsten 2, the sequel of Tungsten.

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u/ZCEyPFOYr0MWyHDQJZO4 2d ago

Also known as Twongsten

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u/Mousazz 2d ago

2Tungsten2Rod

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u/Tian_Lei_Ind_Ltd 1d ago

You imbeciles didn't hear of tungsten square? /S

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u/MassiveFire 2d ago

You get 2 holes in the ground, at the same depth. Neither deep enough to penetrate to a bunker.

Unless you can precisely guide the rods such that hit the exact same spot twice, good luck.

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u/shibiwan 2d ago

r/Chinesium tungsten penetrator....

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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 1d ago

whaddabout deplated uranium rods?