If there is no powder, where is the muzzle flash coming from? Super heated plasma?
If they can get the range of this weapon accurately out to 200 miles, then it is a game changer. At that point, it is time to bring back Battleships. Montana class with railguns instead of 16 inchers.
Many articles on this over the years on FR.
Here’s a good explanation:
Meanwhile, have they solved the problems of accuracy (no guidance systems works), lethality (no explosive fill for targets at ranges beyond where the kinetic energy drops off), excessive rail wear, atmospheric heating of the projectile at high velocities (How meteors become itty-bitty meteorites) and that huge electromagnetic pulse generated by the shot that allows receivers all over the world know exactly where you are?
7000+fps sounds pretty awesome, but what does the projectile weigh? 7000 is fast but just doesn’t strike me as game changing. It’s just 3-4 times as fast as a normal round. I would guess that a lot of the velocity gets scrubbed off after a few miles.
One of the ways they sold this was the idea that the projectiles would be so cheap but in fact they’re incredibly expensive:
they are so expensive that right now the budget for the u.s. Navy cannot afford almost ANY of them.
It is time to field test this railgun on North Korea’s long range missile tests.
So much for reduced physical size. That thing is a monster. Looks like it will take up a lot of real estate what ever it is deployed on.
Nice. Comes with its own deer stand.
I wonder what happens if there is a short?
This electrically powered rail gun is to sophisticated as well as complicated for use on a naval vessel.
Until it can be simplified to be maintained by your average seaman it won’t do much good.The navy will still require conventional guns to defend their ships in the event this rail gun has a significant failure,Power or otherwise.
Also the rail gun system needs to be miniaturized.That test model was huge.
It also needs to be water proof because water and electricity don’t coexist well.
I see this as a project that will take another 50 years before it’s put on any combat vessel of the U.S.Navy/
That’s right, take away the most awesome part of a battleship gun... the BOOM.
While I like technology as much as anybody, there’s stuff you CAN do, then there’s stuff you COULD DO BUT DON’T NEED TO.
This (since the 1980s when I first heard about them) sounds suspiciously like the latter.
All those years ago we knew that “J Department” was up to something neat, but now we know it was really neat! ;-)
In “gun” vernacular, 4500 mph is about 6600 fps.
They can’t even get the chemburner Advanced Gun System to work, and they are going MOAR transformative?