Aten's Hammer

In the ANIMA continuity, the UN keeps its own anti-Angel insurance rather than depending entirely on NERV Japan, and Aten's Hammer is that insurance: an unmanned kinetic weapon under direct United Nations control, stationed as sentinel over the Spear of Longinus.

Whatever justification the UN offered publicly, the common assumption is that the weapon's real assignment was blocking NERV from ever reclaiming the Spear. Circumstances instead turned it against an enemy both organizations shared.

At its heart the weapon is brute physics, a rock with a rocket attached. The 6,100-ton body was selected from the Aten asteroid group and fitted with tritium-pellet nuclear pulse engines, then parked at the L2 Lagrange point some 60,000 kilometers beyond the far side of the moon, where gravity and centripetal force balance out.

From that station the engines can drive the asteroid to speeds above 100 kilometers per second, banking enormous kinetic energy. When it finally struck its target, the impact released a blast measured at 1.25 gigatons.

The UN Security Council authorizes the weapon's first and only recorded firing after Armaros seizes the Spear of Longinus on the moon, news Makoto Hyuga relays to Misato Katsuragi. Before the rock arrives, Armaros hurls the Spear away into the void.

The Hammer connects at full speed, yet even a 1.25-gigaton impact fails to silence Armaros immediately; the giant continues speaking through Rei Trois and only vanishes shortly after the strike. Working through the sensor noise the blast created, Aoba then computes the Spear's trajectory and finds it aimed at Earth, gaining speed as it comes.