The problem with these has always been battery power and bulk, not the accelerator part. One wonders if they’ve solved the battery issues.
There’s also weather and terrain issues. Water and dirt and electronics don’t mix.
Solar powered.
Or perhaps each soldier has a cohort who carries a portable windmill to power up the battery.
</sarc>
Reality is, power density of a battery is so much less than gun powder, so even if it works once, even twice, a battery small enough to be ‘man portable’, will discharge VERY quickly. Remember, this ‘technology’ coming from the creators of the soon to collapse Three Gorges Dam. CCP ‘engineering’? No damn good.
The battery is probably something the size of a steamer trunk just outside the frame
Nah.
From the article:
“It is obvious that these weapons are still in the prototype stage, as their range and impact are not optimum, very likely due to the guns’ limited battery or capacitor capacity to store and release energy, the expert said. But once this technical problem is solved, the coilguns will become much more powerful and could replace the firearms of today.”
Cartridge rifles and pistols have over a century of fairly intense development behind their current designs. Well understood ballistic performance, proven in combat, easy to manufacture (weapon and ammunition), etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
To be a possible game changer, the proposed new system has to provide the possibility of a “militarily significant improvement” in performance. Once you check that box, you then get to explore the schedule and funding issues involved in manufacturing and fielding enough of the new system to translate that militarily significant improvement into battlefield success.
The weapon probably incorporates complex electronics and those will have to be hardened against the abuse that is a part of field service with the infantry. As for the energy required to operate the weapon, it probably will be divided in two: on-board batteries to operate the fire control/optical systems and separate batteries integrated into the ammunition system to provide the pulsed high energy needed to launch the projectiles. Inserting a clip would provide both new projectiles and the energy needed to launch them. Still have to figure out how to store that much energy without loss over long periods of time (that’s the storage characteristic of the chemical energy system that is being replaced). If not, developers are going to have to come up with a recharging system the infantry can actually use in “every clime and place.”
No they haven’t solved the battery or capacitor issue. Any high school kid can build what they are showing off, in fact there are numerous youtube videos of people clowning around with homemade coilguns.
This is in the same venue as “Iranian Stealth fighter” unveiling. They are trying to show that “see the Americans aren’t the only ones with railguns, we even have railgun pistols!”
